I admit it, I hate paperwork, and I suspect many of you feel the same way. Still, we have to live with it: contracts, invoices, utility bills and documents of every kind are part of real life.
This is surely where AI can lend a hand: documents are essentially text, and LLMs are pretty good at handling text. Will local models be too? We’ll find out soon.
The perfect software, like the perfect hardware, doesn’t exist: it depends on what you want to achieve.
I favour stability and reliability, and I always use open-source software or, in the case of LLMs, open-weight models. In AI everything changes at breakneck speed: chasing every new release is impossible and not very useful either, but you often find yourself having to try a new version of something or tweak a delicate parameter. It takes next to nothing to break everything, beyond repair. Without a solid safety net, the PC stays out of action until you find the time to fix it.
Like every computer scientist or enthusiast, over the years I’ve piled up an impressive number of components: CPUs, memory, disks, cases, power supplies and boards of every kind.
Anything more than 10 years old is considered obsolete, and yet these components are still perfectly functional and can run almost anything decently. Does that apply to AI models too? Definitely not!
But there is a loophole: what matters is the GPU, because the LLM runs entirely there. The rest of the machine doesn’t need to be particularly sophisticated.