How to use AI locally. Off the grid. And why you NEED to

[Moab]

I don't think anyone is going to understand this. But I'm going to try. Because I think this technology is going to vastly separate the extremely successful peppers/off gridders and the rest of us. Dismissing this technology is like dismissing the internet. Except it is going to change everything a thousand times more than the internet ever did.

This homesteader/off gridder uses AI locally. Meaning open source AI applications and stored data. On his own home comouter. That are not part of the big tech owned AI sphere. Meaning he uses it privately on his own computer.

I've talked about AI alot on here. Less that 5% of private citizens use AI globally. If you are one of those people that don't understand it. And it's very easy to not understand. (But to use it is no more complicated than a Google search. In fact the top results in Google are now powered by Gemini - Googles own AI. You can download Gemini and all the others for free and use them for free.) Or believe that it is going to ruin the world. Watch this video.

He has similar concerns. As we all should have. About big techs controlling the world. Which they have already done with the internet. But this will expand exponentially with AI.

Watch this video. The guy is a homesteader/pepper. He built his own AI system on a home computer. And very simply explains how he uses it and how important it is to use. And why it saves him a massive amount of time.

One example is he has every manual for every piece of tech or equipment he owns. House, appliances, solar system, vehicles - every piece of equipment.

He describes simply how a middle of the night power outage was solved quickly by him simply asking his private AI to solve it. It could have taken him days reading manuals and troubleshooting.

I have used AI in a similar fashion to fix vehicles, computer problems, phone problems etc etc in a fraction of the time it would have taken me searching the internet or reading manuals.

But more importantly he explains AI's massive value to a prepper. And how to minimize real world conflicts down the road with big tech trying controlling users and access.


https://youtu.be/Lf_UqxoDM5o?is=0QTWiXxYjthgbpta

[Raptor]

I have been using AI a lot lately (ChatGPT, Grok, Claude & Perplexity). I have been amazed at its usefulness. I have used Grok for instance to take photos of an error and message and fix issuses.

That said I have been considering setting up an OLLAMA open ai model for work that I want secure due to confidentiality concerns. I asked grok for some some how to advice and this is what it came up with:

   Option 1: LM Studio (Recommended for Most People)

• Go to lmstudio.ai and download the installer for Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon), or Linux.
• Install and open it.
• Use the search/discover tab to find a model (examples: Llama 3.2 3B, Qwen2.5/3 7B or 14B, Gemma, DeepSeek-R1 distill, or OpenAI's gpt-oss-20b).
• Download the GGUF quantized version that fits your RAM (Q4 or Q5 is usually the sweet spot).
• Load the model and start chatting.
• Once the model is downloaded, you can disconnect from the internet — everything runs locally.

LM Studio also has a local OpenAI-compatible server (usually http://localhost:1234/v1) you can turn on if you want other apps to use it.
Option 2: Ollama (Great CLI + API)

• Download from ollama.com or install via:
  
  
  • Windows (PowerShell): irm https://ollama.com/install.ps1 | iex
  • macOS/Linux: curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
• Open a terminal and pull a model:
  Bash
  
  
  
  Code Select Expand
  ollama pull llama3.2          # small & fast
ollama pull qwen2.5:7b        # strong all-rounder
ollama pull gpt-oss:20b       # OpenAI's open-weight model (~16 GB)
• Chat with it:
  Bash
  
  
  
  Code Select Expand
  ollama run llama3.2
  Type /bye to exit.
• After the first download, it works fully offline.

Ollama runs a local OpenAI-compatible API at http://localhost:11434/v1 (use any dummy API key like "ollama"). Many tools (coding assistants, Open WebUI, etc.) can point at this instead of OpenAI's cloud.
Quick Tips

• Start small — try a 3B–8B model first to confirm everything works.
• Privacy: Once downloaded, nothing leaves your machine.
• GUI on top of Ollama: Install Open WebUI or just use Ollama's own desktop app if available.
• OpenAI's own open models: gpt-oss:20b and gpt-oss:120b are available via Ollama and are designed for local use.
• Avoid models tagged :cloud if you want true offline operation.

That's it. Download one of the two tools, grab a model that fits your RAM, and you're chatting offline.