Living in Colorado Springs has its perks, one being the proximity to the American Numismatic Association and a thriving local coin community. The knowledge and experiences I've gained from fellow enthusiasts have been invaluable. It's been wonderful getting to know local scene.
New Collectors, Same Challenges
Over the years, I have observed how high the barrier to entry can be to coin collecting. It can feel intimidating for new collectors to build the courage to go to a local coin shop or show. And once they are there, they are bombarded with words like “grade,” “obverse,” “slabbed,” “mintage,” and hundreds of other insider terms. No wonder so many new collectors only show up once and never return. With the rise of the younger collectors, I felt it was essential to make numismatics as accessible as possible.
With the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence, I wondered how I could use AI to help out the hobby.
Meet Numi: The World's Most Powerful Coin Grading and Identification AI
I've been closely following the developments of OpenAI and ChatGPT. In November 2023, OpenAI released GPTs, and I got access. I knew this was the chance I was waiting for. Within 10 hours of getting access, I developed the initial build of Numi, a fine-tuned AI chatbot designed to simplify coin grading and identification for collectors of all levels.
Here is a video demo of Numi if you do not have a ChatGPT Plus subscription.
Real-World Testing and Community Feedback
I've been actively testing Numi with my local coin shop and at coin club meetings. It's thrilling (and a little scary) when I pull out Numi and test it live in the field. Some collectors were blown away. Others simply could not believe it. I asked a collector to guess how long it took me to fine-tune and create Numi initially. He said three months. In reality, it just took 10 hours for the initial alpha build.
The feedback has been incredibly insightful. In just four days, I have managed to absorb it and adjust Numi to handle a large number of use cases.
Challenges and Learnings in AI Development
Developing Numi has been an enlightening experience. I built Numi using only natural language. No traditional coding is needed. Building out Numi has made it clear to me that this is the future of software development. This shift to AI will allow anyone to create software tools for their specific needs. As a Product Manager, I can't wait to see what other PMs create with their teams.
Numi's Evolution and Future Vision
My short-term goal is to optimize Numi for accurate coin grading and information retrieval based solely on photos.
My long-term goal is to shape Numi into the go-to app for novice and advanced coin collectors. I want Numi to be so good that whenever a collector has a question about their coin, the first thing they do is pull up Numi.
I created Numi to give back to the hobby that has given me so much. I invite you to check it out, share your thoughts, and be part of its evolution.
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Update #1: In late December 2023, I decided to step back from Numi. It was a wild ride, and I learned a ton. You can visit Numi's project page to read a full retrospective, where I give a rundown of what went into building the app, community reception, results, and lessons learned.
Update #2: After OpenAI released a major update to their GPT-4 model, I revisited Numi to retest its accuracy. Check out this blog post, where I broke down my test results, showing that Numi's accuracy increased by 32.47%.
Update #3: After hearing feedback from the coin community, I revised my methodology for testing Numi's accuracy. I also retested Numi using OpenAI's latest model, GPT-4o. Check out my follow-up article.
Update #4: Numi has upgrade to Numi v2.0!
