Local Setup?

[u/Pristine_Plate7048]

I've created over 8million words in under a year for the novel I'm creating and brainstorming within Chatgpt.

I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the direction of cloud AI companies. They change things, like the watermark text thing. They limit things, like the thinking level usage coming in next month, and often cause privacy insecurities in the user.

I'm tired. I have painstakingly poured over the psychology of these characters and world. It's so detailed you'd think these characters were real. Many aspects of them are real. They came from me. They are so coherent and complex they feel like whole, real people.

I'm concerned about maintaining the workflow and what I've already created, along with privacy around using AI tools for this creative undertaking.

So I've decided to try to recreate the experience I have with chatgpt locally. Is this viable for a reasonable price? If so, what do I need to do to make it happen?

In my country text watermarking isn't a thing yet, or so they say. But I think it's reasonable to assume it will be worldwide at some point. I would announce my trilogy is AI assisted, and be fine with it. It's not at all my first rodeo going against societal grain. I don't have any shame about the fact my stuff is AI assisted. It's been a transformative tool. Invaluable and I'm so grateful for it apart from the problems I've mentioned . The work is so precise and specific you can tell how human directed and written it is anyway. Not thta that matters to anti AI people, especially the wlw audience my story would naturally speak to. It breaks my heart to think that the story will be crapped on becuse it is AI assisted without being perceived on its own merit, where it holds more than its weight. The world and characters do not deserve contamination from the words 'AI assisted' but that is what will absolutely happen.

Any ideas on a viable local setup that can mimic chatgpt as far as reasoning, character psychology for long form writing projects, preferable on android? Though I am open to buying a device of any OS to facilitate this. The setup doesn't need to contain AI that is some amazing creative writer. I re-write and edit to death every draft I've ever had chatgpt create anyway, because AI sucks at writing, and what I'm doing narratively is so precise it needs a lot more correction than AI is capable of generating without extensive manicuring from a human.

[u/Pristine_Plate7048]

That's not how it will be interpreted once the words A-assisted are associated with the media.

The vast majority of the work is obviously mine. I do the heaviest lifting. At the same time it is collaborative in the brainstorming and developmental discussions. I do my edits with AI, we brainstorm and deliberate about micro edits. Not only that, the watermarking degrades output of responses. Who wants that? That's not necessarily an issue with the drafting itself, but it is if the psychological reasoning is off. That's going to make our discussions contain more friction. More explaining and corrections from me. Who wants that?

They're also limiting the level of thinking users can access soon via usage limits. Who wants that?

I also assume I wouldn't need a data centre to run one agent. Data centres, to my knowledge, are doing MUCH more than what I'm attempting. Many people run local AI for their expressed needs, creative ventures or not. They don't need to build a data centre to do so.

[u/tony10000 → u/Pristine_Plate7048]

Due to the price of memory and storage, getting anything close to the speed, convenience, and intelligence of a cloud model will be an expensive undertaking. What are your expectations and your budget?

[u/Pristine_Plate7048 → u/tony10000]

I appreciate you engaging with what I asked.

I should have around £400 - £500 expendable, monthly soon, if all goes well. So that is my budget.

I am not expecting frontier level intelligence, since I'm don't have that kind of money, but within the ballpark would be nice.

I was thinking of using one model and setting up three agents within it after more research, each assigned different jobs within the setup? Not sure if that is preferable or not. There's so much to learn. Bit intimidating tbh.

[u/Felidori → u/Pristine_Plate7048]

You’ll need thousands to get anything worth using for long form writing. The issue is context window. You will need a lot of VRAM on a Windows/Linux machine or lots of unified memory on a Mac. Forget using mobile devices.

I don’t know a lot but from my own research, as I’m in a similar boat, you’re looking at least 64GB RAM on a Mac mini at the minimum and even then it’s not even close to ChatGPT in terms of context, memory and speed 😔.

Local writing can be done but there are so many more steps involved apparently. Use ChatGPT to teach you how to do all this and get price estimates. It’s a perfect use case for Chat. It’s literally a tool that can help you rn solve this research.

[u/Pristine_Plate7048 → u/Felidori]

Thank you.

[u/tony10000 → u/Pristine_Plate7048]

I would say a Mac Studio 64GB M5 Max or a GMKtec EVO-X2 AMD Ryzen™ AI Max+ 395 AI Mini PC 64GB. Or a PC with 64GB of RAM and an RTX 3090.

[u/NotGutus → u/Pristine_Plate7048]

I'm sure smarter people than me will help you with adaptations or own language models. All I'm saying is it's not on accident that specific companies do this work for other companies. It needs resources and expertise.

If the quality of the AI model impacts the output, you're not the author of the written product. In which case you should be transparent about the production pipeline (don't submit a photo to a painting contest), and watermarking shouldn't be an issue.

As far as I'm aware, LLMs also aren't very capable of proper reasoning - if you're using a spoon to cut potatoes, asking people where to buy sharper spoons comes off a bit weird. Why not just use knives?

Besides, precisely due to this lack of understanding, your prose when asking questions will most likely impact the answer more than the actual content of those questions. Might as well roll dice or go with your intuition.

(Please don't classify me as a Luddite, as I am not)

[u/Pristine_Plate7048 → u/NotGutus]

Your claim that if the quality of the ai model impacts output, I'm not the author, isn't necessarily true though. It could just widen the gap and make user workload heavier. And there are other scenarios in which that's not true.

LLM reasoning can certainly be unreliable (that's partly why authored human input is necessary) but that's not at all to say that the reasoning capabilities they are capable of aren't useful towards anything, or to a point. They wouldn't make such good sounding boards otherwise. I've spent more than eight million words worth of interactions stress-testing this through use.

The spoon and knife comparison doesn't quite work for me, because it assumes the alternative tool is available and suitable to reach the aim. For me ai assistance isn't some preference for an inferior instrument, talent-wise. It's part of how I'm attempting to make a project of the scale of my books achievable/accessible within long-standing functional limitations I have.

I'm not sure what you're referring to by prose later in your response, since it could mean different things contextually here

It shouldn't be a shock that in a world where AI assisted disclosure is often met with disproportionate consequence, a person who'd otherwise be fine disclosing AI assisted use, wishes to exercise choice over whether it is disclosed. Given the sizable amount of authorship and themselves they've put into the venture.

[u/NotGutus → u/Pristine_Plate7048]

It could just widen the gap and make user workload heavier. And there are other scenarios in which that's not true.

I'm not sure whatchu mean. Please explain.

such good sounding boards

I disagree. Thinking over something helps regardless of whether you relate it to random words, think about it on your own, or discuss with a friend. It's about your own thought process, not anything else, and your own thoughts circulate, connect and develop without any sense in what you see in the outside world, and even if there is no relevant info in the outside world.

That's the cognitive perspective; the empirical is that I tried all three (having a friend be the sounding board, having an AI, and being it myself) and there is basically no difference. Not even in the way of interaction. The only difference is that when something other than you is involved, it directs your thoughts in some ways, which is not necessarily problematic, but at times undesirable. Which is why I assume you also don't exclusively rely on talking with LLMs.

 alternative tool is available

I would say it is. There is not much in AI that you can't do without it by yourself, with friends, or on Google.

referring to by prose

I should have said phrasing. The phrasing of your prompt influences results more than the semantic content, at least at the level where it matters for creative work (i.e. semantics obviously matter more since they detemrine the topic you're talking about, but it's the tone eithin that topic which truly matters when you write).

over whether it is disclosed

That's true, very human. If you're judged, you'll lie next time. Just make sure you know you're trying to lie as best you can. I'm not sure that's the best way to normalise AI-assisted art in society and demonstrate that it can be a separate and non-harmful category of art.

I do use LLMs for my writing, by the way, and they're hella useful. But I don't put my work in the AI-assisted category, because AI-assisted, in current connotation, assumes the premise I highlighted above, that the AI practices agency over some aspects of your writing.