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Table of Contents
Frequently Asked Questions About Hosting Your Own AI
1. WE REALLY TRULY HONESTLY DO NOT KNOW WHAT MODEL TO RECOMMEND.
In order to pick the “best” model one must consider:
- your use case,
- what resources you have available,
- what formats you can use,
- what tradeoffs you're willing to make,
We can try to put together a simple guide for “here's how you pick a good one”; naptastic is too tired to write that guide though. I just need people to understand, it's not an answerable question. I know it comes across as dismissive, but that's not how it's meant. It's honest.
Aren't there at least comparisons?
Sure. If you find a good one, send it to me and I'll add a link here.
- u/WolframRavenwolf is the only Redditor I see posting comparisons of models.
Can't I at least try one before I download it?
Yes. Nap does not know how. Please ask for edit permission and fill this section in. <3
Please read these few short paragraphs before diving into The Answers.
Philosophy
I very much subscribe to the “Stone Soup” philosophy of open-source. The problem is that everyone wants to be the person bringing the stone. But stone soup only needs one stone! We need tables, utensils, meat, vegetables, seasonings, firewood, and people to tend the fire and stir the pot and cut up the ingredients…
Please consider how many people have put how much time into generating and assembling this information. Yes it's naptastic organizing the page (at least right now) but all the info is coming from other people. I do not want to scare people off from asking questions; otherwise I don't know what to put in the FAQ! But if you are going to bring questions, please also be willing to put some effort into figuring it out yourself, and report back when you have successes.
Important note: YOU CAN USE AI TO HELP WRITE STUFF!!! It's not cheating!
Conduct
Keep content on this Wiki professionally appropriate. Remember, we are all responsible for how our own behavior affects others, including people who are different from us.
How can I help?
- SUCCEED!!! Get something working, even if it's not working as well as you want. Getting better and faster results is part of this FAQ too.
- Tell me about it! What hardware worked? What models? What problems did you encounter and how did you solve them? How fast does it generate?
- Contribute to the actual open-source projects. That is where the most work needs to be done.
- Improve the FAQ. Specifically, consider this question: What would have been helpful to know earlier? What do you wish someone had explained before you spent a bunch of time learning it the hard way? That's what this FAQ is about: every one of us who self-hosts should make it easier for anyone who does it next. Wiki-specific items:
- If somebody wants to set up SSO for DokuWiki so we can just use our Google accounts or whatever… that's on my to-do list, but it's so far down I'll probably never get to it.
- (I'm not gonna switch to MediaWiki.)
And now, without further ado:
The Answers
Getting Started
Know your goals. It is critical that you know what you want your AI to do for you. Even better if you have it written down.
What can't AI do?
(At least not yet, or not well)
- Arithmetic, including counting
What's the best ____?
This is really not an answerable question. TODO this needs a fuller/better explanation.
What kind of hardware do I need?
- see formats-faq for now; this deserves its own page
What software do I need?
- Different software is useful for different goals. See the Applications section below for more detailed information about each application.
What do all these terms mean?
(nap definitely needs help with this)
- need a glossary
How do I do the thing?
- Start with README.MD for the software you want to use. Seriously.
- Links to how-to's
How do I get help with the thing?
- Read README.MD for the software you want to use again. Seriously.
- Discord servers
- subreddits
- Links to other resources
- If you get help, please give back. Update the documentation. Help other people where you can. Fix code where you can.
Next Steps
Better Environment
You Need A Better Environment. (We all do. IMO there isn't a good environment out there, and… that's a rant for another day.)
Faster generation
- flash-attention - Needs testing!
- option tuning - nap knows nothing; any input would be appreciated
- --sdp-attention option says it makes things faster. Needs testing!
Better Results
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
What is RAG and how do I use it?
Other Possibilities
What else can my AI do?
Models
link to formats-faq for now
Applications
-
- Perhaps the most popular starting point. It's (relatively) easy to deploy and use, but also provides a pretty full feature-set including support for plugins.
- Plugin to add image generation by integrating
sooooo much belongs here and I don't even know where to begin
Plugins
I want to establish some ground rules before listing plugins, so that it doesn't turn into a free-for-all of