Recent post re: AI as utility
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.
We have governmental surveillance and we have surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism works so well that governments are now very interested in the data they collect, which is alarming. Unfounded conspiracy theory: It’s probably one of the reasons that governments don’t seem interested in AI’s regulation. If I had the proper equipment to run AI entirely local and efficiently so that the expenditure would justify it, I would.
You probably could. A Tesla P4 or P40 (old data centre cards) are more than up to the job. My Lenovo tiny hosts a P4 (card cost $100 on eBay; the lenovo itself was $200ish) and runs Qwen3.5-35B-A3B at about 20 tok/s. Smaller models are even faster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F_5pdcD3HY
If you’re not bound by the one liter shoebox design, then the P40 is still a great and inexpensive card.
I think I mentioned elsewhere but right now I’m trying to figure out if I can use a magic packet from the Raspberry Pi to wake up the Lenovo as needed rather than leaving it on all the time.
Thing is, if I were going to do in house AI, I’d want to do it up right and from what I can gather, a system like that is going to cost me some jack.