Yup, I’m posting another this week. Sorry.
This week I’m hoping we can wrangle a solution around AI and our selfhosted community. There are plenty of strong opinions (both pro and con), but one thing is for certain - there needs to be better disclosure in promo posts. Two options (that aren’t mutually exclusive):
- Any posts of an AI focused, AI Developed, etc software gets an [AI] tag. No, a [Not-AI] tag is not needed to accomplish this, thats kind of a “non-golfer” sort of tag.
- Comment requiring an AI disclosure response to every promo post, if its not detailed in the post itself. Specifics (generating docs for commands, translation, whole-boat vibe-coded this app, etc) would be requested.
I will say that having disclosure and/or tagging would mean that comments that just say “slop” or “fuck ai” or whatever would be off topic at that point, that information is already provided, so its just noise (and sometimes pretty uncivil - I’ve been light on that for now due to the need for a rule on this).
The tag [AI] would make it easy to filter out (or search for, if that’s your thing), but there is a wildly different degree of AI use out there, and from the posts with a positive score, its usually due to responsible AI use (translations, a snippet they had to do something obscure with, available to use with AI but doesn’t require it, whatever), which is why I think the disclosure has a place as a benefit to everyone.
Please provide any input or alternative options on this, and I can then put it to a vote like the last one. Comments seem to be the best approach without involving something off-site, but if you have a better idea/option, please share.
Personally. I want an AI tag so I know to look more carefully.
I don’t mind AI speeding up a skilled engineer.
But I do mind a crypto bro, turned AI bro, with little experience, too eagerly advertising their vibe coded app.
Its too exhausting to audit everything I may be interested in and the AI tag would help me to budget and optimize my time.
Sounds like a good solution for me. I think most users dislike completely vibe coded apps, not ai supported apps. So maybe we should be more specific here.
For example: [Vibe-Coded]
This would also support new users finding the right tag.
i want a community where AI is not tolerated at all. ai is a corporate grift and there’s no room for it in a self built community founded on resistance of the tech status quo
The cat is out of the bag. AI is common place in coding. I dont see why it matters if it was developed with AI or includes AI. Its the same product with/without.
Its the same product with/without.
AI copies from the middle of the curve of quality averages, throwing out the highest and lowest quality examples (for being different).
Use of AI does have bearing on quality.
A skilled team can undo that harm, and a particularly unskilled team may be better off with AI than without.
But it is incorrect to claim that AI has no impact on quality of outcome.
Sure it can have a bearing on quality amoung many other factors that can have a bearing on quality. I dont need to judge all those factors I can judge the end result.
Eh people vastly over estimate how good of a cider they are. If everyone was as good as they say theybarr online we would not be having all these bugs in the software to begin with.
Fair point.
You know, after last week, I’ve landed on the position that this is an intractable debate. Both sides have valid points and neither side is willing to concede or meet in the middle. That’s just people.
Ironically, I think both sides want he same thing - no bots, no slop.
To that end, for the proper functioning of this group, I think that the wisdom of having an AI tag (even though I personally think it’s a blunt tool) is probably the only productive way forward. The pro and anti sides will not see eye to eye…but at least with [AI] tag, maybe the worst excesses of both may be mitigated.
Cynically, if we look at Reddit as a “what not to do” example…the only thing that stops Lemmy from becoming Reddit 2.0 is friction. The tag provides friction.
Anything that stops the real slop invasion (ala r/localllm et al) is a big plus. I’d like to think that almost all of the users here are savvy enough to tell slop from real, but at the end of the day, if every other post becomes slop, it gets exhausting to deal with.
Bot posts on Lemmy have been on the rise, as (presumably) people migrate from Reddit and bots follow.
If the new community rules + AI tags can mitigate both slop and the FuckAI crowd, I’m for trying it.
EDIT: I think the [AIT] proposed else where is better than straight [AI] tag.
Not a fan of a tag, since it’s not transparent enough. Sounds like every minor use of AI would warrant a tag, which seems past the point.
The disclosure comment I feel works well. People that care about if/how AI was used can check it to get a proper impression of the scale of and workflow for AI usage, and those who don’t care can ignore it.
I don’t have a problem with AI. I have a problem with vibe-coded apps released as a one-shot and then never maintained or supported. That’s slop.
I also have a problem with the trace apps (lifttrace, nutritrace, etc.) because while they’re entirely vibe-coded, they are actively developed, but they’re posted here by a brand promotion account that doesn’t otherwise contribute to the community. If there’s any “x% self-ptomotion” threshold, they fail it, because it’s 100% self-promotion.
I know I also reported another post as slop recently but I don’t remember what it was.
If there’s any “x% self-ptomotion” threshold, they fail it, because it’s 100% self-promotion.
Not with f/loss, just account age and they are above the threshold there.
Yeah. Abandonware isn’t cool generally
Honest question intended to spark discussion.
Does this mean that all “single developer” projects can be considered abandonware (that aren’t open source/forkable)?
Or really “all” non open source software really. Companies “can” die.
IMO, abandonware means software that is a dead-end upon its very release, with no hopes or plans for anyone to every build upon it. Abandonware is generally not extensible, follows no good design philosophy that would let someone else build it up, and embodies essentially nothing.
Even a 100-line throwaway Python script has more utility to someone when it is published on PasteBin or whatever. But something like a binary executable released with no source code, with no support, and with no intent by the developer to ever make anything more of it, that’s abandonware.
I don’t have a problem with people talking about different open source technologies.
But I do have a problem with this comm promoting the grift that “AI” exists.
What exactly is this post about? Chat bots? Image/video processing? Content generation?
None of this stuff is “AI”. Please don’t label it as such. It’s grifter nonsense.
Thanks for grappling with this @[email protected]
Yes this is needed. Thank you for the proposal here.
I would suggest that this probably needs to be really explicit about any AI involvement, i.e. a minimum if AI is used in any capacity in the coding process, it should require the tag. And ideally an explanation if it was used in other parts of the process.
That last post that came up said they used AI ‘for code review only’. In my mind even that deserves the tag, because these terms are so easy to work around. Someone can ‘code up’ the following:
#include <studio.h> int main(void) { printf(“Program that does X thing”); }
(yes, I know the main arguments are not written correctly. You get the point)
and then have the AI reviewer ‘fix’ their code by doing all the actual work. A strict requirement for this tag, for any AI involvement in the creation of the code seems like the key. The code part is going to be where the security issues crop up, and where it’s really important to know who or what is producing the code you’re about to run on your home server.
I think we’re fairly used to a world where people use templates for their websites, documentation, etc. AI use there bothers me less, but an honest disclaimer saying what the AI did would sure go a long way to reducing the hate comments. I think people will still drive-by downvote, but that can’t (and IMO really shouldn’t be) prevented. But without a rule, people aren’t going to be honest.
The scary part is just how emboldened people feel nowadays to just entirely use an AI for all the coding, documentation, website, and then not even put their name on the project. These to me feel like borderline state actor trojan horses disguised as open-source projects.
Legitimate open source developers can spend years writing code to do something very sinplle but useful, and for them to be drowned out by a bunch of completely AI driven, slop posts really bothers me.
Self hosted AI is such an oxymoron.
How so
“Open source AI models” are a lie. They all are leftovers from SaaS companies. “Self hosting AI” will not only never be competitive with these companies closed source offerings in any meaningful way, but also, the moment they stop publishing open weight models, there is no chance in hell that new, community driven ones will pose any threat to SaaS products.
I like the AI tag idea. I’m someone who has what I’d call a noderate approach to AI, not an AI bro but any means but I’m also okay with some things built with AI if they’re done with care. If others don’t want to see it, fine, then that’s what a tag could be useful with. However the fuck AI/slop comments on something that admits to being AI is annoying to me. (We know it’s AI, they literally said it is).
If it becomes too much content, then yes would be okay with bi-forcating the community, buy only after it becomes a problem.
I’m not consistent about it yet, but because of exactly this, I’m trying to differentiate the two when I talk.
Responsible automation? I use ML or machine learning.
The grift consuming the world? A Tech Bro? “AI”
I think one of the saddest things is the conflation between the two, like you can’t even talk about one without invoking the other. Or it opening up that whole ethical debate, when you’re just talking about, like, a 100M transcription model trained by one research in some university on a potato.
Yeah it’s heresy on Lemmy, but I do find it genuinely useful. My only regret is that I have to use Claude/Anthropic more than I’d like, which is why I have a vested interest in selfhosting myself. I’d rather figure out how to run the larger models myself and cut them off completely, but you even begin to mention that here and you’ll get downvoted to hell.
You don’t even need Claude anymore. GLM 5.2 API is good enough for 95% of the same things and vastly cheaper.
MiMo 2.5 Pro and Kimi are also very good. And then there’s Cerebras API if you just want simple things done quick.
The thing with self hosting, while awesome, is that it requires a lot of hardware and considerable time investment for what’s essentially a “base tier model,” or at best one step down for what’s still a very cheap API. I still love it, especially the privacy and control aspect, but you aren’t running Claude at home unless you’ve got a threadripper or server hardware collecting dust.
…Hence I can understand why people don’t pursue it. Especially since a cursory Google search will lead you to trying the Deepseek distillation on Ollama (which is awful).
That’s where I am okay with hardware, but can’t seem to fit the models on my 3090. I have dreams of something like an A100 someday, but not until there’s a ton of used ones that hit the market. What do you use for your hardware?
I have a single 3090!
That’s the dream GPU, these days.
And I have 128GB CPU RAM. So the best model I can run is MiMo 2.5 (a 300B model) at around 10 tokens/sec, using hybrid CPU inference.
…But that’s the worst-case scenario, for speed. It’s an IQ3_KT quant (a high quality “trellis” quantization type, but very slow on CPU), with a gigantic model that barely fits in my RAM+VRAM combined, with no DFlash or any kind of speculative decoding turned on. I could tune it to be much faster, but I mostly just want “max quality, fast enough to read as it streams, barely fits in memory” for this model.
For speed, or prompts with lots of thinking or context (like agenic use), I just run Qwen 3.6 27B now. That would fit in your 3090 no matter how much CPU RAM you have, but you have to be smart about the backend and quantization you pick. If you just use Ollama, it’s gonna tell you it won’t fit, or use some horrible default that spits out garbage.
…This is what I meant to emphasize.
It’s not just the hardware. You kinda have to be part developer, part enthusiast to even follow this stuff, it up optimally, and keep it up-to-date. If you just try to Google “best LLM for 3090,” you will get absolute garbage.
I’m still impressed you got any MiMo to work at home, at 10 tok/s.
For those trying to visualise that -
https://mikeveerman.github.io/tokenspeed/?rate=10&mode=agent&think=10
Is it a constant 10 or does it (it must do, right?) drop off as context increases?
I imagine you must have compaction or something to mitigate that.
It’s drops off, but not as much as you’d think.
MiMo uses 5:1 SWA, so its long-context compute doesn’t increase as catastrophically as older models. That, and most of the “slowness” comes from the MoE layers being on CPU (whereas the attention layers that get heavier at high context are all on the 3090).
That’s the beauty of these MoEs: they’re just the right size for the “compute-lite” parts to stay in CPU RAM.
I will measure it tomorrow. It is a constant ~9-10TPS for short queries, but definitely slower near my current max context of 85K.
And do you mean prompt compaction? I don’t automate that; when I use that particular model, I tend to use it in Mikupad, aka “raw” notepad mode, and manipulate the context directly. This is so I can do things like chop out conversations, pick different tokens from the logprobs, or edit its own replies/thinking and continue mid reply.
I like manually handling this because, being a local model, prompts are cached. Streaming starts quickly if most of the prompt stays cached, which is actually a really nice advantage over APIs.
I will say that having disclosure and/or tagging would mean that comments that just say “slop” or “fuck ai” or whatever would be off topic at that point, that information is already provided, so its just noise (and sometimes pretty uncivil - I’ve been light on that for now due to the need for a rule on this).
good idea
it won’t solve the “noise” problem though. I was relatively active on [email protected] and we were constantly nagged by sloppies even though the community is clearly dedicated to generativeArt
it won’t solve the “noise” problem though. I was relatively active on [email protected] and we were constantly nagged by sloppies even though the community is clearly dedicated to generativeArt
Maybe y’all would get less hate if the sub was called “generativeArt” instead of grifterly claiming to be “AI”.
i joined the community, i didn’t create it.
Alternative: make a separate “selfhosted-ai” community for the sloperators.
Just to point out a few projects that allow AI contributions:
- Firefox
- NodeJS
- Chromium
- curl
- Go
- InfluxDB
- MariaDB
- Prometheus
- Linux
- openSSL
- Blender
- Mattermost
- Caddy
If you want all projects related to AI in a different community, it may be easier for you to start “selfhosted_without_ai” or something.
Indeed, AI is a tool, and the human should be an expert who verify its work. What I don’t like are posts about apps that are completely vibe-coded without any thought put into them, which pose dangerous security risks.
Thats the reasoning behind the disclosure bit, I agree its a tool, and great when used correctly.
But if you try and use a hammer like a drill, you’re gonna have a bad time.
It is not ‘just a tool.’ It is not “great.” Too many people focus on how it is used and not how it is created, how it affects us, and how it affects the world.
I’m just going to shortcut this and say two things:
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I can guarantee the overwhelming majority (if not all) of your issues have nothing to actually do with LLMs and everything to do with corporations. Power use, data center buildouts, market impact, whatever - none it is an an llm problem. LLMs are just another piece of software, thats all.
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Your personal opinion on this, as well as mine, does not change the overall conversation here. So how about we just stick to the topic at hand?
LLMs are inextricably tied to nvidia gpus. Local or cloud, the technology exists to help the shovel salespeople. The gold diggers, everyone this tag is supposed to segregate, have been misled by corporations. Without their lies, and a pliant media, this tag would be unnecessary, and llms would be rolled out in a more limited and responsible way. To promote different uses of gold during a gold rush is going to inflate the bubble and enrich the rich, unless it is properly contextualized. Technology does not exist in a void, pretending it does digs us a deeper hole.
I run my local models on a Mac mini m2, but I could also be using AMD (ROCm), Intel with OpenVINO, or just CPU. Simple edge applications I could even use something like an RK3588.
Being tied to NVidia is marketing from NVidia, not the reality of LLMs.
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