[markab21]

For Llama-based progress - Reddit - /r/LocalLlama has been my top source of info, although it's been getting a little more noisy lately.

I also hang out on a few Discord servers: - Nous Research - TogetherAI / Fireworks / Openrouter - LangChain - TheBloke AI - Mistral AI

These, along with a couple of newsletters, basically keep a pulse on things.

[brucethemoose2]

Lots of interesting information is so fragmented in niche Discords. For instance, KoboldAI on merging and RP models in general, and some other niches. Llama-Index. VoltaML and some others in regards to SD optimization. I could go on and on, and know only a tiny fraction of the useful AI discords.

And yeah, /r/LocalLlama seems to be getting noisier.

TBH I just follow people and discuss stuff on huggingface directly now. Its not great, but at least its not discord.

[cyanydeez]

surprised someone doesnt just build an AI aggregator for this type of thing, seems like a real valueable product.

[TeMPOraL]

Speaking of hard skills: how does one just hang out on a Discord server in any useful fashion? I lost the ability to deal with group chats when I started working full-time - there's no way I can focus on the job and keep track of conversations happening on some IRC or Discord. I wonder what the trick is to use those things as source of information, other than "be a teenager, student, or a sysadmin or otherwise someone with lots of spare time at work", which is what I realized communities I used to be part of consist of.

[brucethemoose2]

That's pretty much the trick.

Discord is so time inefficient, its almost hilarious. For every incredible conversation between experts you observe, you have to weed through 200 times as much filler.