The obvious difference, though, is that you knowingly use all of these tools; you get to choose whether and how you use them. AI, like the weapons you point out, can invade your life without you knowing it even exists.
It's actually the other way around with AI. If you want to do web-search, you got to disclose your keywords to a search engine. If you want to post on social networks, you are in plain sight. If you use a mobile phone, you broadcast your location.
But if you use your local models, it's more like running a linux box, it is private, customizable and unfiltered. LLMs will reverse the centralization trend we have seen with search and social. They can create a "safe space", "a room of one's own" where we can be creative and unrestricted.
LLMs promise the privacy internet never gave us, anyone, remember how we felt private online 20 years ago? You can't download a Google or FB but you can download a Mistral and even run it on a normal laptop.
> But if you use your local models, it's more like running a linux box, it is private, customizable and unfiltered. LLMs will reverse the centralization trend we have seen with search and social. They can create a "safe space", "a room of one's own" where we can be creative and unrestricted.
i really like this idea too. Running LLMs locally reminds me of running Linux locally, it wasn't full on UNIX but it as close to a real operating system regular people could get. Maybe the LLMs you can run at home aren't the bleeding edge but they're as close as you can get. Notice how the technology companies are already lobbying authorities hard to try and keep LLMs only under their control. ..hosted in their 'cloud' and accessible only by paying their subscription. The generation that created the OSS movement and the best success stories, GNU and Linux, are doing their best to make sure it never happens again.
The amount of people that will run their own models is negligible at the scale of the society. You also can't choose to cut yourself off from the bad outcomes, no matter how much you try. Propaganda 3.0 might not affect you directly, but the political outcomes it produces will.
The same AI that invades my life to do harm can "invade" my life and be (extremely) helpful.
And the latter is more likely. Because the willpower of an AI is just the mimicked willpower of the people who made it, and there will always be more good people than bad people.
visarga|1 year ago
But if you use your local models, it's more like running a linux box, it is private, customizable and unfiltered. LLMs will reverse the centralization trend we have seen with search and social. They can create a "safe space", "a room of one's own" where we can be creative and unrestricted.
LLMs promise the privacy internet never gave us, anyone, remember how we felt private online 20 years ago? You can't download a Google or FB but you can download a Mistral and even run it on a normal laptop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Room_of_One%27s_Own
chasd00|1 year ago
i really like this idea too. Running LLMs locally reminds me of running Linux locally, it wasn't full on UNIX but it as close to a real operating system regular people could get. Maybe the LLMs you can run at home aren't the bleeding edge but they're as close as you can get. Notice how the technology companies are already lobbying authorities hard to try and keep LLMs only under their control. ..hosted in their 'cloud' and accessible only by paying their subscription. The generation that created the OSS movement and the best success stories, GNU and Linux, are doing their best to make sure it never happens again.
edit: fixed some bad grammar
monsieurbanana|1 year ago
pmarreck|1 year ago
And the latter is more likely. Because the willpower of an AI is just the mimicked willpower of the people who made it, and there will always be more good people than bad people.