← The AI Pilot
The AI Pilot · № 15

Local Model

Ran a meaningful AI model entirely on your own hardware without cloud APIs, proved it works with a documented demo.

The idea

Running a model on your own hardware teaches what models actually need: memory, compute, time. The cloud hides all of it behind a subscription. Have your kid watch the system monitor while a query runs. Once they've seen tokens generate slowly because they're out of VRAM, they understand the real economics of every AI product they use. That understanding is hard to get any other way.

Steps
  1. Pick a model that fits your hardware.
  2. Set up the local stack: model, runtime, interface.
  3. Run a meaningful task entirely locally.
  4. Demo it. Note token speed and resource use.
What counts

A locally-run model doing something useful, demonstrated with documented hardware. A demo video is plenty.