Ditched the big AI model for a smaller local one, and honestly I prefer it

I spent about 6 months using OpenAI's API for writing stuff, but last month I switched to running Llama 3.2 locally on my laptop. It's slower and can't do as much, but in my experience the responses feel more grounded and less robotic. No monthly bill either, which is nice. Has anyone else gone the other way and regretted it?

2 comments

2 Comments

wendygarcia28d ago

Right? Now every time I see a long response from a big AI I'm like "okay bot, tell me how you really feel" lol. Local models have that scrappy indie vibe I can't explain.

abbycraig28d ago

Nah you're right about the vibe but gotta push back a little. Local models aren't always smaller or scrappier - some of them are huge, like Llama 3 70B. The difference is you can actually see what's happening under the hood and tweak it yourself. Big AI models are locked down tight, you just get a black box. With local stuff you can mess with the settings, see the raw tokens, even fine tune it on your own data. That's the real difference, not the size.