I remember doing this about ten years ago, taking up almost the entirety of my phone’s storage in the process, and feeling unreasonably delighted by it. I’m not sure why, but this idea really appeals to me. It’s all very good having access to information on some server somewhere, but literally having (a very useful amount of) information on almost every topic humans have so far contemplated available literally in your pocket is somehow incredibly thrilling. For the same reason I’m fascinated by the idea of locally-hosted LLMs. It’s hard to explain. Maybe it’s like some sort of digital version of hoarding behaviour.
56K, such luxury. I know what digital scarcity is, and a 1Gbps fiber line to my house isn’t it. Sure, I have my secret stash over in the corner of that NAS in the garage, just in case. But I otherwise can now download what I want in seconds, minutes at worst. Ergo, I don’t hoard nearly like I used to (never was a true hoarder in the first place, so I can probably be ignored).
Not to say that your point isn’t well taken. One does tend to keep stuff after a long overnight download, and old habits die hard. And I do have a local copy of Wikipedia…just in case.
Local LLM with the entirety of Wikipedia accessible via RAG (or better, newer technique) is legitimately a little super-powered assistant. It works when the grid goes down, and the searchability is orders of magnitude better - especially when you're not sure what you're looking for.
<|im_start|>user
What is this sign about?\n<image>
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<|im_start|>assistant
The sign is about bullying, and it is placed on a black background with a red background.
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