A revolution of solar-powered ultra-local compute
Greg Osuri, Marko Stokic, Michael Heinrich & Luki Song on Can User-Owned AI Compete with Big Tech? (Nebular)
“Folks in Africa don’t exactly have 20 bucks a month to subscribe to ChatGPT. So there is this whole new revolution happening with ultra-local compute, with expert models that are helping local population — and doing it powered by solar. That’s the kind of impact I like to see, and that’s not going to happen with centralized models, with extractive business models. It’s going to happen with local, it’s going to happen open source, it’s going to happen decentralized.” — 00:23:11
Context: Describing GPU-equipped data centers in remote Africa running local models as tutors and healthcare diagnostics; he also jokes he uses ChatGPT as “co-parent” for his three-month-old. Quote spans to [00:23:54].