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.
This is a “feel guilty about missing recycling” kind of complaint.
Having a server run for an hour or two (?) a day is negligible. You use more energy running a fridge, or leaving a few lights on, or browsing Lemmy for a while. Or running a docker container for other services. You release more greenhouse gasses eating beef, or driving anywhere, or even opening your front door a few times, and individual industries are going to use vastly more electricity than a few self hosters ever would. If you own an EV, you’ve probably blown out your entire zip code of self hosters.
…But if it still bothers you, you can find an ewaste smartphone(s) and host on that. This is actually a very neat use case IMO.
However, if you get to the homelab scale of “an EPYC + 3090s running all the time” that electricity use does start to add up. But that’s quite a rare hobbyist tier, I’d say, and it really shouldnt be running 24/7.