Earlier quoted context omitted.
oh absolutely. burning a coal plant to decide if i should close discord is peak 2025 energy. strictly speaking, using the local model (Ollama) is 'free' in terms of watts since my laptop is on anyway, but yeah, if the inefficiency is the art, I'm the artist.
An interesting thought experiment - a fully local, off-grid, off-network LLM device. Solar or wind or what have you. I suppose the Mac Studio route is a good option here, I think Apple make the most energy efficient high-memory options. Back of the napkin indicates it’s possible, just a high up front cost. Interesting to imagine a somewhat catastrophe-resilient LLM device…
Macs would be the most power efficient with faster memory but an AI Max 395+ based system would probably be the most cost efficient right now. A Framework Desktop with 128GB of shared RAM only pulls 400W (and could be underclocked) and is cheaper by enough that you could buy it plus 400W of solar panels and a decently large battery for less than a Mac Studio with 128GB of RAM. Unfortunately the power efficiency win is more expensive than just buying more power generation and storage ability.