AI Vocabulary · 06 Own Your AI
What is Local AI?
Running a model on your own laptop or server. Nothing leaves the machine, but smaller models fit.
Local AI means the model runs on hardware you control, a laptop, a workstation or a company server, instead of a provider's cloud. Free tools such as Ollama or LM Studio make it possible to download an open-weight model and chat with it offline within minutes.
The trade-off is size. The models that fit on normal hardware are smaller than the frontier cloud models and weaker on the hardest tasks. For many routine jobs, such as summarising, rewriting, classifying and extracting, they are often good enough.
Why it matters for you
Local AI is an option when data must not leave the building, when there is no reliable internet, or when you want predictable costs without per-token fees.
Own it
This is ownership in its most literal form: your model, your hardware, your data, no account required. Even if you don't use it daily, trying it once shows you that AI does not have to depend on a single company.
Where it comes from
Running AI at home has a clear turning point. In March 2023 Georgi Gerganov released llama.cpp, which made Meta's LLaMA models run on an ordinary MacBook, and within days people were chatting with large language models offline. Simon Willison documented running LLaMA on his M2 MacBook that same month. Tools like Ollama and LM Studio later turned this into a few clicks.
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