The worst thing is that when used for good AI is fantastic! Scientific progress with purpose built AI to find planets, predict the weather, and tons of pattern matching has been in use for decades with positive benefits!
Even LLMs can be a useful tool in the right situations where looking like words people would say but accuracy is NOT important.
The problem is trying to use LLMs to do everything and failing while running the tech industry, the environment, and soon the economy into the ground. They took something positive, ruined it and coopted the terminology while shoving it down everyone’s throats.
AI is used as propaganda tools to spread it, and it can bee seen on youtube, social media quite readily. plus it sexualizes victims to like csam, and festishized unattainable “women” for conservatives.
conservaties pretty much buys into/believes in anything that is scammy.
I’m not here to argue for or against LLMs in general, but self-hostable AI is a thing. Actually open AI is a thing.
A blanket statement saying about AI as a whole technology being good for fascism is about as useful as saying “roads are good for fascism” (they’re great for troop movement after all).
Sorry, but I think the point about local AI not necessarily being evil is the tangent here.
The OP is about motherboard shortages, which is being driven by the big AI companies and is making hardware unaffordable for normal users
The top level reply to that is about how that’s bad because it removes the ability for people to be in control of their own computing
Then someone comes in, saying “yeah, but you can host your own AI so that it’s not evil so not all AI is bad”
Then someone points out that you can only host your AI if you can afford the hardware to do so which, as the OP and the comment you replied to pointed out, is getting really hard to do.
if you did not understand the comment from above it’s fine but splitting hairs like you are doing is silly (everybody knows it’s not 100 % of AI is 100% evil)…
your comment is exactly the same as when people say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”… yes, we all know guns are not autonomously killing people, the point is that guns, as a tool, are remarkably good at doing something we do not want, which is to kill people
Not to go on a separate tangent, but that’s the entire point of guns. They are supposed to kill. That’s not meant to be some crazy conservative defense of them or opposition to regulating them. Just pointing out something that seems to get lost in conversations.
Correct… so when I tell you “guns DON’T kill people, people kill people” you are right to assume and I am just an idiot trying to jingle keys in front of you to distract you from the fact that guns do in fact kill people.
I’ve looked into self-hosted AI and decided it’s not worth the cost - both in terms of hardware and energy - when compared to the relative value to be gotten out of it. YMMV.
The models you can run on consumer hardware are still nowhere near the stuff that runs in corporate data centers. To stick with your metaphor, its like running a little steam engine at home while the big guys get to operate nuclear reactors…
You can get pretty far with a stack of 5090s and llama.cpp with split mode graph (or so I’ve heard, I’ve never tried), or AMD’s unified memory CPU thing.
It’s not as good as data centre grade stuff, but it’s not nothing either.
The US government is already setting down the legal framework to make self hostable AI ilegal so good luck with that. Also self hostable AI is still being trained on stolen material so still fascist.
AI is an amazing tool for fascists.
Annihilate private access to computing, censor and rewrite all comms, destroy free software and the last remnants of education…
Every single decision made for evil.
And all these vendors who are locking themselves into one customer are about to learn why that’s a bad idea.
The worst thing is that when used for good AI is fantastic! Scientific progress with purpose built AI to find planets, predict the weather, and tons of pattern matching has been in use for decades with positive benefits!
Even LLMs can be a useful tool in the right situations where looking like words people would say but accuracy is NOT important.
The problem is trying to use LLMs to do everything and failing while running the tech industry, the environment, and soon the economy into the ground. They took something positive, ruined it and coopted the terminology while shoving it down everyone’s throats.
Sorry but I’m so done with hearing about how cool and useful the knife that they’re plunging into our necks is.
Maybe try reading my comment again?
This article talks exactly about that: https://tante.cc/2026/04/21/ai-as-a-fascist-artifact/
How are they about to learn why that’s a bad idea? Like, when the bubble pops?
I think. Most likely they going to be outcompeted by china.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-27/why-china-s-deepseek-qwen-and-moonshot-are-a-worry-for-us-ai-rivals
AI is used as propaganda tools to spread it, and it can bee seen on youtube, social media quite readily. plus it sexualizes victims to like csam, and festishized unattainable “women” for conservatives.
conservaties pretty much buys into/believes in anything that is scammy.
I don’t know if spending unfathomable amounts of money buying up the entire global supply of computing products can be considered a “tool”.
I’m not here to argue for or against LLMs in general, but self-hostable AI is a thing. Actually open AI is a thing.
A blanket statement saying about AI as a whole technology being good for fascism is about as useful as saying “roads are good for fascism” (they’re great for troop movement after all).
You can’t self host anything when the hardware is no longer affordable.
I recently saw a Hacker News article on people running some Deepseek V4 Flash variant on macOS, which is a surprisingly capable model for its size
Or available. Companies have pre-sold years worth of inventory to AI companies.
You see hot that’s tangential to what you’re replying to?
Your point is completely valid, but in another discussion.
Sorry, but I think the point about local AI not necessarily being evil is the tangent here.
The OP is about motherboard shortages, which is being driven by the big AI companies and is making hardware unaffordable for normal users
The top level reply to that is about how that’s bad because it removes the ability for people to be in control of their own computing
Then someone comes in, saying “yeah, but you can host your own AI so that it’s not evil so not all AI is bad”
Then someone points out that you can only host your AI if you can afford the hardware to do so which, as the OP and the comment you replied to pointed out, is getting really hard to do.
Only when you ignore what was literally the first premise and conclusion.
if you did not understand the comment from above it’s fine but splitting hairs like you are doing is silly (everybody knows it’s not 100 % of AI is 100% evil)…
your comment is exactly the same as when people say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”… yes, we all know guns are not autonomously killing people, the point is that guns, as a tool, are remarkably good at doing something we do not want, which is to kill people
Not to go on a separate tangent, but that’s the entire point of guns. They are supposed to kill. That’s not meant to be some crazy conservative defense of them or opposition to regulating them. Just pointing out something that seems to get lost in conversations.
Correct… so when I tell you “guns DON’T kill people, people kill people” you are right to assume and I am just an idiot trying to jingle keys in front of you to distract you from the fact that guns do in fact kill people.
Corps want to privatize roads and make them all toll roads too
They are succeeding in my area.
Roads were also useful for random citizens and people who happened to be in the area.
LLMs are overwhelmingly more useful to bad actors.
I’ve looked into self-hosted AI and decided it’s not worth the cost - both in terms of hardware and energy - when compared to the relative value to be gotten out of it. YMMV.
Same, pretty much. It is possible though, which makes LLMs a more democratic technology than, say, nuclear reactors.
The models you can run on consumer hardware are still nowhere near the stuff that runs in corporate data centers. To stick with your metaphor, its like running a little steam engine at home while the big guys get to operate nuclear reactors…
You can get pretty far with a stack of 5090s and llama.cpp with split mode graph (or so I’ve heard, I’ve never tried), or AMD’s unified memory CPU thing.
It’s not as good as data centre grade stuff, but it’s not nothing either.
The US government is already setting down the legal framework to make self hostable AI ilegal so good luck with that. Also self hostable AI is still being trained on stolen material so still fascist.
Not the best comparison given the interstate highways systems’ history of disproportionately targeting Black and Latino communities.
That’s kinda my point. Roads are a useful technology, but they can be used by fascists.