Recent post re: AI as utility

https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/people-will-buy-intelligence-from-us-on-a-meter-chatgpts-ceo-sam-altman-has-critics-worried-with-his-ai-vision

Myself, I’m a fan of local LLM / self hosted ML… but if you ever needed a clarion call that a hard pivot is coming (soon) for online/ cloud based AI…Altman et al are making some concerning mouth noises (to say nothing of broader concerns with OAI, Anthropic etc).

Right now, I’m sketching out a plan where my Raspberry Pi (always on, 2-3w) uses a magic packet to wake up my modest AI server (Lenovo P330 with Tesla P4) if/when needed (Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B); no point in chugging down 80-100w, 24/7 for no good reason.

If the trend continues the direction it appears to be (increasing costs, environmental impacts etc) then I’d feel a lot better hosting my own as port of first call and replacing simpler tasks with more traditional programs. YMMV.

  • somegeek@programming.devEnglish
    3·
    15 hours ago

    I started working toward self hosting LLM for my small company using ollama and opencode as agent But I realized a good model like GLM 5 requures 250GB of RAM and 24GB vram with a 4080?? I dont know, this is what the LLM told me itself.

    I ended up using qwen-code2.7-7b-16k.

    Currently the best thing I have is my laptop, 16GB ram, i7 9750H gtx1650

    How do you guys selfhost? What models do you use that are actually good?

    • SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      1·
      6 hours ago

      I mean…that entirely depends on your use case - and I hate saying that. For me and what I do, Qwen SLM (esp Qwen3-4B 2507 instruct and Qwen3.5-2B) are exceptional. But I’m not trying to do Claude at home.

      Best bet? Spend $10 on OpenRouter and try different models. In a head to head with ChatGPT 5.4 mini (excellent for coding BTW), I’ve found Qwen 3.5 27B more than able to hold its own for coding tasks…IF you narrowly gate it/confine it. The last batch of Qwen’s really are something. Dunno about the 3.7 series.

      Having said ALL that, I’m really tempted to go back in time and code myself a deterministic expert system, with user updatable knowledge cascade, tool calling and a minimal amount of Markov chain word garnish for flavour. I think we use to just call that “a program” lol.

      Really tempted actually, because if 50% of llm use case is basically Super Google but not shit…well, I can make that myself. I just need to point my autism at it.