site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3471 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 29, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I am not a coder. If something requires me to install dependencies, I can sometimes successfully do that with very detailed instructions, but often I fail even then.

I also do not trust anything I type into an online AI to not be either used against me, or filtered in ways I will find annoying.

So I was pleasantly surprised to discover NMKD's Stable Diffusion GUI, which allows me to more or less one-click-install (unrar, start the .exe, click the "install" button), so I could play around with this image-generating AI stuff everyone has been talking about. It has been interesting and fun, and doesn't require me to send my prompts for use or abuse by distant others.

(I recognize the possibility that the creator is essentially doing this to me anyway--I have no way of checking that on my own--but that is a larger problem and not the point of my simple question.)

Here's my simple question: I would like to have something like NMKD's Stable Diffusion GUI, but for text-based AI instead of art-generating AI. That is--a one-click-install, locally-hosted, no-expertise-required version of ChatGPT or similar. My instinct is that this should be smaller and easier than the Stable Diffusion I run on my PC, but maybe I am just super wrong about that?

Anyway, do any of you know of such a thing?

My instinct is that this should be smaller and easier than the Stable Diffusion I run on my PC, but maybe I am just super wrong about that?

I believe large language models take much more VRAM for generation than image models. For example, the open model BLOOM requires 352GB. So it's not realistic to do if on your local machine at the moment.

The only project I've seen along these lines is https://github.com/LAION-AI/Open-Assistant, but I don't think it's real yet.

Amazing... I had seen a number like that elsewhere but I assumed that was for training models--not for hosting local instances of them. Based on that thread, I have to wonder whether OpenAI made some kind of tremendous breakthrough such that they could host so many conversations to the public, or whether they just happen to have dedicated an ungodly amount of compute to their public demonstrations.

For comparison, Stable Diffusion has 890 million parameters and GPT-3/ChatGPT has 175 billion, so about 200x. I think they probably have really good mechanisms to distribute their queries rather than a breakthrough in efficiency of inference, but I'm not super knowledgeable about this topic.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats