Oh yeah, sure, and you can absolutely run open-weight models on your own hardware, which is definitely an improvement from having to use an API from a company. But for me personally, I won’t touch even open-weight models because they’re not fully open source, and fuck that.
For me, it’s open source or GTFO.
For me, I’m going to be one of those hardliners who refuses to use closed source AI no matter how much better than open source it is.
Back when I was first learning about computers and operating systems and software, I did not care so much about open source or understand it and why it was important, so therefore I’ve made decisions that now I have trouble getting away from some closed source programs, and I refused to do the same thing with AI that I did back then.
Look at OLMO from AI2
Open wait AI? No. Open source AI? Yes.
Open weight AI only allows you to tune the parameters and run it locally, where open source AI also gives you the training data and stuff that was used to make the model itself.
Using open source software on lineage OS or graphene OS with no Google Play services solves the vast majority of the problems brought up in this article. It doesn’t solve all of them, but it solves most of them.
I’ve had this app for quite a long time, but I’ve never seen anybody in the mesh, just because of how short-range Bluetooth is.
However, I have successfully used both meshtastic and meshcore, and I prefer meshcore.