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Please ELI5 the arguments people use to claim it's possible to use AI/LLMs ethically, locally, openly etc. (piefed.social)
submitted 6 hours ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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I usually don't even understand the lingo they use. "Open-weighted" is the most recent one, then it usually goes down to specific "models" that everybody is supposed to know about.

These are my thoughts (I will stick to the vague "it" for now, but of course therein lies another question: "and how does all this apply to various specialised AIs"):

  • Is it really feasible to run it 100% locally? I know there's plenty of people with very powerful rigs indeed, but still. Or are 99% of these people really saying "it would, in theory, be possible to run that locally, therefore your concerns are invalid"?
  • If yes to the previous: the software doesn't come from nowhere and ultimately still relies on gas-turbine-powered datacenters and stolen IP and stolen personal data, no?

If what I wrote above is true, what exactly are people arguing when they say it's still possible to use LLMs ethically or true to FOSS philosophy, because ... ???

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[–] 8 points 4 hours ago (1 child)

It is absolutely possible to run 100% locally, but in practice, at the high end, only quantized models. The full size top end models require hundreds of GB of video ram, and while you can buy that, it's stupidly expensive. Quantized models can often perform nearly as well with a small fraction of the ram, but they do sacrifice a little in precision.

These models (well the good ones) ultimately all trace their origins to what you'd likely consider "stolen" data. Whether that's ethical is debatable. If you're in the "information should be free" camp, there may not be an issue here.

As for the power/environmental impact, for what they do LLMs are actually very low impact per-request. If you're concerned about your personal AI power use, then I hope you never fly in an airplane, and minimize your driving because those are much bigger issues.

It's the scale of use that makes AI an environmental problem, and that's a question about corporate use of AI, not personal use of AI.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 hour ago

    The power impact was something that in the early days worried me. Looking into it I agree with you to some degree. Like using it instead of a search engine I think is by and large a wash. One prompt will likely take more energy but will give you information that likely would have required searching several times modifying the words and jumping between sites which are rendering all sorts of things. Heck If I booted into a command line and connected to an llm Im almost sure it would be significantly less energy. If you chat for entertainment instead of streaming vidoe also lower energy use. Now I think one thing is in making things. It lets people who otherwise couldn't make pictures and videos and code. In the large majority of cases what is made is going to be disposed even for folks that eventually make something they care to keep around or use. While using software to do the same uses a lot of energy the only people doing it generally where making long lasting things for projects or such. So that is where I question it. Still I will have it make a picture to use in an rpg or such.

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