I quit ChatGPT for a free, private, and local AI called Ollama - here's why

["Ollama is a small player in the AI game, but it should be much bigger than it is. This installable AI has several benefits you won't find with the likes of ChatGPT, and those benefits are what keep me from ever using a more traditional service.", "I've written about Ollama quite often over the past year, but I thought it was time to share the reasons I choose to use this app over any other. Ollama is a free, open-source tool that you can download and install on your computer (Linux, MacOS, or Windows).

With Ollama, you can run large language models (LLMs) directly on your system. The main issue to consider is your computer's speed. AI requires a fair bit of horsepower to be useful.

That doesn't mean you can't use it on a midrange machine, but if you're using it on mid- to low-end hardware, it'll run more slowly, and you might not be able to multitask while it churns through your queries.", "However, if your machine has an Nvidia GPU, it will run faster (even with midrange hardware) because it'll offload a lot of the processes onto the GPU, leaving the CPU to do other things. To run Ollama smoothly, your system should have a minimum of: Ollama offers a user-friendly GUI for both MacOS and Windows, but can also be used from the command line. On Linux, you can use the Ollama CLI, but there are also GUIs (such as Alpaca and Msty) that can work.", "With Ollama, you can download many different LLMs.

There's a vast library of models that can be downloaded -- you'll find DeepSeek, Gemma, Qwen, Mistral, Gpt-OSS, Llama, and many others. Now that you understand what Ollama is, let's talk about why you should be using it. Ollama is free.

Since I've been using it, I've not paid a single penny for the app or the models. Just install Ollama, pull a model, and go. You don't have to pay for the app, the models, or usage.", "This is a big one for me.

I won't use public or for-profit AI because I know my queries and the responses can be used by third parties. The companies behind for-profit AI can collect your information and use it for various purposes, and that's not something I am OK with. It's not that I query with any personal information (I mostly use AI for research), but I still don't want those queries collected and used to create a profile of me.

Just like my browsers, I want my AI to be as private as possible, and Ollama is really the only way to make that happen.", 'You\'ve heard of how AI uses an inordinate amount of energy, right? A report this month from the International Data Center Authority (ICDA) notes that an estimated 6% of total US electricity use goes to data centers. "The US is by far the world\'s largest data center location, with 43% of global consumption.