If they get it right (opt in by default, respects privacy, appropriately sandboxed for security, clearly defined use case, etc.) then I can see how this could be useful.
It can barf out large outputs fast. As long as you review it and clean it up, it can get you 90% of the way there on a lot of things where you know what the final output should be basically.
Need a quick bit of code for a common process? An email requesting a meeting? A picture of a dog burying a bone? A list of which people might be the suspect in the video? Then AI is great!
Need math? Accurate texts or image matching? Use a different tool.
I can envision use cases like wanting to be able to search through all your documents or photos when you can’t clearly remember what you wrote (assuming it’s properly implemented and well-secured, e.g. path-constrained time-limited read-only access), or local chatbot for brainstorming, or if you want to play around with agentic “AI” (automating small things on the local system that aren’t easily scripted) then having one that is private and properly sandboxed would be helpful.
yup. at the moment if you want a truly private, properly useful local AI agent you basically have to set one up correctly, manually, yourself. Having one come as part of the OS already largely set up for the user would be a massive W.
If they get it right (opt in by default, respects privacy, appropriately sandboxed for security, clearly defined use case, etc.) then I can see how this could be useful.
But it’s a big if.
I still don’t understand how AI would be useful even if I owned the whole stack from the power station on up
It can barf out large outputs fast. As long as you review it and clean it up, it can get you 90% of the way there on a lot of things where you know what the final output should be basically. Need a quick bit of code for a common process? An email requesting a meeting? A picture of a dog burying a bone? A list of which people might be the suspect in the video? Then AI is great!
Need math? Accurate texts or image matching? Use a different tool.
I can envision use cases like wanting to be able to search through all your documents or photos when you can’t clearly remember what you wrote (assuming it’s properly implemented and well-secured, e.g. path-constrained time-limited read-only access), or local chatbot for brainstorming, or if you want to play around with agentic “AI” (automating small things on the local system that aren’t easily scripted) then having one that is private and properly sandboxed would be helpful.
yup. at the moment if you want a truly private, properly useful local AI agent you basically have to set one up correctly, manually, yourself. Having one come as part of the OS already largely set up for the user would be a massive W.
but yeah, If.
I use incus as a sandbox for claude. Previously I used podman, but podman in podman is a pain, so I gave it a full vm 😄