Re: [NonGNU ELPA] New package: llm

[chad <yandros@gmail.com>]

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On Thu, Aug 31, 2023 at 5:06 AM Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> wrote:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
> > As for LLMs that run on servers, they are a different issue entirely.
> > They are all SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute), and SaaSS is
> > always unjust.
> >
> > See https://gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
> > for explanation.
>
> I do not fully agree here. [...]
> Thus, for many users (owning less powerful computers) LLMs as a service
> are going to be SaaS, not SaaSS. (Given that the SaaS LLM has free
> licence and users who choose to buy the necessary hardware retain their
> freedom to run the same LLM on their hardware.)
>

 It's a somewhat subtle, gnarly point, and I didn't find a way to express
it as well as Ihor Radchenko here, but I will add: the ability for a free
software-loving user to run their own SaaS is both increasing and
decreasing in ease recently. On the one hand, it's difficult these days to
run a personal email service and not get trapped by the shifting myriad of
overlapping spam/fraud/monopoly `protection' features, at least if you want
to regularly send email to a wide variety of users. On the other hand, it's
increasingly viable to have a hand-held machine that's a tiny fraction of a
space-cadet keyboard running (mostly; binary blobs are a pernicious evil)
free software that easily connects back to one's own free-software
"workstation" for medium and large jobs, even while avoiding "the cloud
trap", as it were.

(Such things have been a long-time hobby/interest of mine, dating back
before my time as a professional programmer. They're still not common, but
they're getting increasingly moreso; native Android support for emacs, as
one example, will likely help.)

For large AI models specifically: there are many users for whom it is not
practical to _actually_ recreate the model from scratch everywhere they
might want to use it. It is important for computing freedom that such
recreations be *possible*, but it will be very limiting to insist that
everyone who wants to use such services actually do so, in a manner that
seems to me to be very similar to not insisting that every potential emacs
user actually compile their own. In this case there's the extra wrinkle
that the actual details of recreating the currently-most-interesting large
language models involves both _gigantic_ amounts of resources and also a
fairly large amount of not-directly-reproducible randomness involved. It
might be worth further consideration.

Just now, re-reading this seems like a topic better suited to
emacs-tangents or even gnu-misc-discuss, so I'm changing the CC there.
Apologies if this causes an accidental fork.

I hope that helps,
~Chad

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