This is an LLM trained using a $100 budget to RENT access to graphics cards. It's not about what you could do BUYING hardware for $100.
Once the LLM is trained you don't need the rented hardware anymore.
NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
271–280 of 326 posts
Re: NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I find the hype around AI to be wildly overblown, but that doesn’t mean that what it can do right now isn’t interesting & useful. If you told me a decade ago that I could have a fuzzy search engine on my desktop that I could use to vaguely describe some program that I needed & it would go out into the universe of publicly available source code & return something that looks as close to the thing I’ve asked for as…
They go beyond merely "return something that looks as close to the thing I’ve asked for as it can find". Eg: Say we asked for "A todo app that has 4 buttons on the right that each play a different animal sound effect for no good reason and also you can spin a wheel and pick a random task to do". That isn't something that already exists, so in order to build that, the LLM has to break that down, look for appropriate l…
I’m aware. But the first part is “find me something in the vector space that looks something like the thing I’m asking for”. Then the rest is vibes. Sometimes the vibes are good, sometimes they are ... decidedly not.
If the results are useful, then that’s what matters. Although I do suspect that some AI users are spending more time pulling the AI one-armed bandit handle than it would take them to just solve their problem the old fashioned way a lot of the time - but if pulling the one-armed bandit gets them a solution to their problem that they wouldn’t work up the motivation to solve themselves then that counts too, I guess.
Re: NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I find the hype around AI to be wildly overblown, but that doesn’t mean that what it can do right now isn’t interesting & useful. If you told me a decade ago that I could have a fuzzy search engine on my desktop that I could use to vaguely describe some program that I needed & it would go out into the universe of publicly available source code & return something that looks as close to the thing I’ve asked for as…
Why do you think what you describe being excited about does not warrant the current level of AI hype? I agree with your assessment and sometimes I think there is too much cynicism and not enough excitement.
Oh sure, there’s also way too much cynicism in some quarters. But that’s all part of the fun.
Re: NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
#274Interesting exchange on the use of AI coding tools: curious how much did you write the code by hand of it? Karpathy: Good question, it's basically entirely hand-written (with tab autocomplete). I tried to use claude/codex agents a few times but they just didn't work well enough at all and net unhelpful, possibly the repo is too far off the data distribution. https://x.com/karpathy/status/1977758204139331904
> too far off the data distribution.
I guess his prompts couldn’t provide sufficient information either (there’s no limit). Sounds more like a user issue to me. :) I don’t think there’s anyone that can type faster than ChatGPT.
Re: NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
#275Interesting exchange on the use of AI coding tools: curious how much did you write the code by hand of it? Karpathy: Good question, it's basically entirely hand-written (with tab autocomplete). I tried to use claude/codex agents a few times but they just didn't work well enough at all and net unhelpful, possibly the repo is too far off the data distribution. https://x.com/karpathy/status/1977758204139331904
He probably just doesn’t know how to prompt correctly (heheh).
Re: NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
#276Built so many nano AIs over the last several years. I have played with nanoGPT, its ok. Just hype for Kpathy... So many tiny LLMs out there now that run on cheap SOCs. Try SmolVLM512, runs fine on a sub $100 pi.
You're misunderstanding the project. This isn't about an LLM that runs on $100 hardware. It's about a usable LLM that costs $100 to train from scratch.
Re: NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
#277I am building a product similar to DataGPT https://datagpt.com/ and Julius.ai - will this help in that?
Not at all. This project is for learning how LLMs work and how to build them from first principles. If you want to solve problems that aren't "how do I build an LLM from scratch" this isn't the right path for you.
Re: NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything is unless your app is a React todolist or leatcode questions.
people say this like it's a criticism, but damn is it ever nice to start writing a simple crud form and just have copilot autocomplete the whole thing for me.
I've probably commented the same thing like 20 times, but my rule of thumb and use with AI / "vibe coding" is two-fold:
* Scaffolding first and foremost - It's usually fine for this, I typically ask "give me the industry standard project structure for x language as designed by a Staff level engineer" blah blah just give me a sane project structure to follow and maintain so I don't have to wonder after switching around to yet another programming language (I'm a geek, sue me).
* Code that makes sense at first glance and is easy to maintain / manage, because if you blindly take code you don't understand, you'll regret it the moment you need to be called in for a production outage and you don't know your own codebase.
Re: NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I find the hype around AI to be wildly overblown, but that doesn’t mean that what it can do right now isn’t interesting & useful. If you told me a decade ago that I could have a fuzzy search engine on my desktop that I could use to vaguely describe some program that I needed & it would go out into the universe of publicly available source code & return something that looks as close to the thing I’ve asked for as…
Why do you think what you describe being excited about does not warrant the current level of AI hype? I agree with your assessment and sometimes I think there is too much cynicism and not enough excitement.
The current AI hype is causing a lot of leaders to put their organizations on the path to destruction.
Re: NanoChat – The best ChatGPT that $100 can buy
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything is unless your app is a React todolist or leatcode questions.
people say this like it's a criticism, but damn is it ever nice to start writing a simple crud form and just have copilot autocomplete the whole thing for me.
"Anything that can be autogenerated by a computer shouldn't have to be, it can be automated"