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Forget ChatGPT: why researchers now run small AIs on their laptops

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2024-09-21 12:00:03

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The website histo.fyi is a database of structures of immune-system proteins called major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules. It includes images, data tables and amino-acid sequences, and is run by bioinformatician Chris Thorpe, who uses artificial intelligence (AI) tools called large language models (LLMs) to convert those assets into readable summaries. But he doesn’t use ChatGPT, or any other web-based LLM. Instead, Thorpe runs the AI on his laptop.

Over the past couple of years, chatbots based on LLMs have won praise for their ability to write poetry or engage in conversations. Some LLMs have hundreds of billions of parameters — the more parameters, the greater the complexity — and can be accessed only online. But two more recent trends have blossomed. First, organizations are making ‘open weights’ versions of LLMs, in which the weights and biases used to train a model are publicly available, so that users can download and run them locally, if they have the computing power. Second, technology firms are making scaled-down versions that can be run on consumer hardware — and that rival the performance of older, larger models.

Researchers might use such tools to save money, protect the confidentiality of patients or corporations, or ensure reproducibility. Thorpe, who’s based in Oxford, UK, and works at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, UK, is just one of many researchers exploring what the tools can do. That trend is likely to grow, Thorpe says. As computers get faster and models become more efficient, people will increasingly have AIs running on their laptops or mobile devices for all but the most intensive needs. Scientists will finally have AI assistants at their fingertips — but the actual algorithms, not just remote access to them.

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