Does anyone run their own AI service?

If so,

Which one?

What hardware?

Do you have a way to access it from outside or from a phone?

And, if you’re open to sharing, what do you do with it?

I know AI-enabling hardware is insanely expensive right now, but some of the smaller (<32GB) more efficient models (think deepseek- or qwen-based) don’t absolutely need specialized hardware to run and perform well enough for many purposes.

I am so aware of the absolutely abysmal privacy practices of basically all AI companies that I’m not comfortable using them to help me with web searches and the such, because there’s no way that all this information won’t be going into a profile. This makes me want to have my own “helper” service.

  • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    I wouldn’t mind running a model at home, mostly to help document my setup. But I just don’t trust it. So no.

    • mal3oon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      It depends on your hardware. But right now the “cheapest” hardware you can buy for a usable setup, is the strix halo (128GB), and run gufo with qwen 3.8 flash next (Q4XL). It is sonnet 5 level. Very good speed (both prefill 1000+ and decode 50+), with up to 256k context.

      I have it set up with omp + searxng. Sometimes with hermes. Really good! It changes the game for local setup.

        • mal3oon@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          23 hours ago

          Just get the cheapest OEM, Bosgame M5. I know “cheapest” is in quotes. But again, it is the cheapest 128GB unified vram device you can get right now. I got mine at pre-orders, so yes, more than a year and a half ago, prices were a steal. Also, great desktop (mini) PC overall and very efficient, even if you don’t want to do AI.

          • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            1·
            18 hours ago

            I have like 150GB of DDR3 spread over multiple 2/4/8/16GB sticks, I wonder if I can get that working for something like this 🤔

    • andrewoidxyz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Why wouldn’t you trust a local model? I mean sure they are less intelligent but if you dont expose it publicly you should be good to go

      • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        I don’t trust it to be accurate; I’d have to reference the sources it pulled from. Extra work for little payoff.

        • andrewoidxyz@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          Got it, makes sense. You’d probably have to do some benchmarking first. Depending on how large the source catalog is.