https://www.hyphanet.org/freenet-hyphanet-075-build-1507-fix-probe-routing-plugins-and-upkeep.html
Send Clark and Jimmy, Louis. Great Ceasars ghost.
Bring on the AI swarms. They’re the only thing that can defend us now that AI is free
We've gone from tokenmaxxers to tokenmisers, counting every character we send to AI services. That changed the way we used AI, focusing users on the ticking meter and unable to cast their eyes up and explore the possible.
Those blinkers fell away in the middle of August when Alibaba delivered Qwen3.8-27B, byte-for-byte probably the most powerful language model ever created – and also capable of running on a high-spec laptop.
The community of “local AI” enthusiasts noticed and have spent the intervening weeks whittling Qwen down to fit on an ever-widening array of devices, including – surprisingly – my M4 MacBook Air.
Their work means millions of similar devices can now access near-frontier-level artificial intelligence from free software.
The gap between my MacBook Air and a smartphone isn’t vast. As local AI developers continue whittling Qwen down to size, a few hundred million smartphones will also be capable of running top-tier AI.
While that hasn't happened yet, it won't be more than six months away. At the rate things are unfolding, probably closer to six weeks.
Suddenly, "good enough" AI isn't something that we will have to rent. We can have it, at no cost, on our desktops, our kitchen tables, our classrooms and in our pockets.
That’s great, but also scary because we've been caught unprepared by AI effectively becoming free. Nobody yet knows what we will do with free AI, or if we are ready for it.
All of that feels very much like something I remember clearly from the early 1980s, when the promise of the “home computer” was managing recipes. We knew the device would find a use, but it wasn't until the one-two punch of GUIs and the Web that most people had any real use for a home computer.
That's exactly how this moment feels. Sure, managing smartphone photos will be helpful for millions, but the biggest win will be on the darker side of the ledger – where every bad actor – from script kiddies with a grudge through to the worst of the worst – now have equal access to powerful AI that will go with them everywhere.
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