Open source AI

@Majik I’m looking at a very short course on Coursera about using AI as a learning tool. Is there any decent OS AI? A ChatGPT alternative. ChatGPT is used in the course.

Hi John,

I’m not really an expert on AI, but I know there’s some Open Source versions.

To be clear, by “Open Source”, I’m talking about tools that have source-code available, that you can download, install, and run completely from your own computer.

As you are talking about ChatGPT, I also assume you are talking about Generative AI, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs).

Whether they are useful for your course is another matter. My feeling is they will not be.

If the course is on “prompt engineering”, for example, and it’s focused on ChatGPT, then an open source LLM is probably going to be a massive distraction, and not terribly useful.

You should be aware that installing and setting up these sorts of applications (whether Open Source or commercial, closed-source) is not trivial.

I’ve never set up my own LLM (I must try one day), but the key behind LLMs (and other generative AI) is they are models that have been trained on large data sets. ChatGPT, Gemini, and other public AIs have been trained on massive data sets that include consuming and processing large parts of the whole Internet. It’s one reason they are so controversial.

If you build your own LLM,then you need to find data to train it with. And they tend to need a lot of data to become useful. Training an LLM is a significant subject in itself and if you do a course on this aspect of it, then it’s likely they will recommend an Open Source LLM to install and provide instructions on how to set it up

You will also need quite a lot of computer power to drive it, including GPUs.

There’s a list of some of the more popular Open Source LLMs here:

This includes the recent news-making DeepSeek v3 from China. This page also includes a bunch of paper and links to other resources including training frameworks and deployment tools.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

Keith

3 Likes

The course I’ve started is a very, very short course on using AI as an aid to learning. So I’m assuming as a tool and I won’t have any need to know how AI works under the bonnet. Or if I do then not at a nuts and bolts level. The course is using ChatGPT so I thought if I could find an OS equivalent to use post the course it would be useful. Assuming I get to grips with the principles of the idea.
Thanks for your very full answer, Keith.

Edit: as an old, retired f*** with poor short term memory any method I can get to grips with that helps me learn is very valuable to me, particularly as I’m doing a craft course that, unfortunately has a 20% academic content.

My suggestion would be Gemini, not open source but different to ChatGPT.

1 Like