I tested local AI on my M1 Mac, expecting magic - and got a reality check instead

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ZDNET's key takeaways

• Ollama makes it fairly easy to download open-source LLMs.
• Even small models can run painfully slow.
• Don't try this without a new machine with 32GB of RAM.

As a reporter covering artificial intelligence for over a decade now, I have always known that running artificial intelligence brings all kinds of computer engineering challenges. For one thing, the large language models keep getting bigger, and they keep demanding more and more DRAM memory to run their model "parameters," or "neural weights."

Also: How to install an LLM on MacOS (and why you should)

I have known all that, but I wanted to get a feel for it firsthand. I wanted to run a large language model on my home computer ...