Ask HN: How close are we to local LLMs being useful? What's the impact?

4•AbstractH24•2h ago

Feels to me like local models are an under-covered aspect of this whole AI boom.

If everything improves over time, at some point a good chunk of tasks won’t need to be done in data centers or be subject to the whims of a few frontier AI labs.

How close are we to that? Or is my thinking flawed?

Comments

buffer_overlord•2h ago

until its cheaper to train and infer than 100k gpu data centers...i doubt it will ever compete.

PaulHoule•2h ago

I do classification with SLMs and for my tasks when I have a few thousand samples the frontier models in zero-shot and few-shot modes are embarassingly bad in comparison.

david927•2h ago

I think we're past that point; they're absolutely useful already for a lot of tasks. I think it's about costs, convenience, and benefits of a frontier model for what you're doing.

AbstractH24•1h ago

Which ones are most useful? Any suggestions on where to go to start exploring this world?

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Comments

Tell HN: Happy Fathers Day

Ask HN: How close are we to local LLMs being useful? What's the impact?

Ask HN: Do you have an unusual income source

Ask HN: What is your opinion on TUI applications

Ask HN: Are you being "529 Overloaded" by Anthropic too?

Ask HN: Will programmers write more efficient code during the memory shortage?

My Opinion on RL

GitHub Banned All CI for Our (OSS) Org Because of Bad Drive-By Contributors

Ask HN: Is anyone using the A2A protocol?

Ask HN: Are people optimistic about the future?

Ask HN: What would justify writting an OS kernel in 2026?

Ask HN: Any AI native Anki alternatives?

Ask HN: What tools are you using for AI-assisted code review?

Norrin – Git/ diff control in Claude Code

Ask HN: Are You a Workaholic?

Ask HN: How should I convert Microsoft Word documents to Markdown?

Ask HN: After you ship a feature, what happens to what you learned?

Ask HN: Favorite aspects of Cocoa/NeXTSTEP for app dev?

Ask HN: What are your favourite Hacker News comments?

Ask HN: I'm lost. How can I define ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)?

Ask HN: What technique do you use to make Claude Code deterministic?

Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?

Ask HN: How to get ideas for space startups?

Ask HN: What is your #1 practical lesson or "aha" moment from coding with AI?

Ask HN: Do you give AI coding agents their own GitHub account?

Ask HN: Do you use Claude Code, Codex, or something else?

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Ask HN: Is anyone else leaving AUR?

Ask HN: How to handle kernel struct changes (e.g. iov_iter) in eBPF?

Ask HN: Do you find vibe coding / agentic engineering to be fulfilling?