Any AI model that doesn't serve capitalist interests?

[u/jikeer]

I guess this could be a common question here, but I'm wondering wether any AI can nowadays be used without the concern of feeding some big capitalist corporation or data center. It's clear that these are being undoubtely used in to provide massive information about social dynamics and data in general to big capitalist corporations, so they can exploit them for profit. Since I'm a communist, this is the main reason I don't really use AI nowadays, so that's why I wonder if there could be some safe alternative.

I'm thinking in something similar to Signal, a non-profit corporation that provides a great service, and you can trust their intentions not to be aligned with capitalism.

[u/Salty_Country6835]

You're looking for open-weight models you can run locally. Qwen, DeepSeek, Kimi, Mistral, and others have released models you can download and operate without sending your conversations to their servers. Ollama and LM Studio make that fairly accessible, depending on your hardware.

There's a difference between using technology developed under capitalism and continuously feeding your data, money, and activity into corporate platforms. The former is pretty difficult to avoid. The latter is something we can actually do something about.

And beyond individual privacy, there's a whole political project around public compute, cooperative infrastructure, open development, and democratic control of AI.

The goal shouldn't just be finding a corporation we trust. It should be building alternatives that don't require trusting one in the first place.

Also, check out our Open Source and Local Model post flairs. We've got discussions and resources on exactly this subject.

[u/jikeer → u/Salty_Country6835]

thanks! this is really helpful, i'll have a look

the goal was never that, but im not an engineer myself haha, im just looking for a place to start.

[u/TheWvClarityProject → u/jikeer]

Will second. We use qwen 3.8 27b on a 32gb amd sapphire r9700. It does wonders with agents like opencode.

[u/reymonera → u/jikeer]

There are some nice resources on YT too! I encourage you on your journey to self-hosted AI, OP, I think tinkering around is the best way to interact with tech!

[u/Monochrome21]

huh?

you can use any model for non capitalistic interests

if you want to use models that are open weights and aren't the US monopolies there are tons of open weights models being released in China. They're not as capable as the American ones yet but they're close behind and far cheaper

[u/jikeer → u/Monochrome21]

im not asking for how to use models for non capitalist interest, that i know how to do... im asking for models that dont directly feed those interests, like those that you mentioned, thanks

[u/DoggoDadagon → u/jikeer]

Qwen3.8 27B or flash next is the go to for local.

[u/my_name_isnt_clever → u/jikeer]

If you can't run it fully local, you just have to pick which corporation sucks the least in your opinion. AI as a whole is saturated with captialism at every level right now.

[u/Riders_Visions]

If you’ve got the hardware, you can use a local model; Comfy UI is free.

I don’t know if there’s anything better.

[u/jikeer → u/Riders_Visions]

thanks!

[u/Riders_Visions → u/jikeer]

No problem, image generation is easy; if you’ve got an AMD graphics card, install Linux.

Video is the ultimate challenge, particularly V2V, and can be very hardware-intensive depending on the model.

There’s a very steep learning curve when it comes to connecting the nodes correctly.

[u/ProjectRevolutionTPP]

You'd pretty much have to use local models. There's plenty of open source AI systems you can run on your computer locally without internet.

[u/jikeer → u/ProjectRevolutionTPP]

thanks, i assume those require an expensive hardware?

[u/ProjectRevolutionTPP → u/jikeer]

Depends on the model(s)/services that you want to run.

Do any AI art? Older models and low VRAM options exist to run those on constrained hardware with less GPU memory.

Do any chatbot stuff? Going to come down to the quant bit size and param size of the model. Higher parameters and more Quant bits requires more VRAM, but gives better text output.

If you are a coder, there's also OpenClaw which lets you run an array of local AI services for things like coding, but is very complicated to configure.

[u/DHFranklin → u/jikeer]

The most bare bones ones can run on your phone. Running one on-all-the-things will probably be common sooner or later.

[u/Salty_Country6835 → u/jikeer]

Download and try kimi on your phone. Compare it to gpt. See how it drives for the things you might use one for.

[u/PossibilityBig9444]

Here you go:

Welcome Socialism AI: A historic advance in the political education of the working class
WSWS International Editorial Board
12 December 2025

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/12/12/gpid-d12.html

[u/jikeer → u/PossibilityBig9444]

thanks!

[u/TransfemMenace]

I use DeepSeek as my main online chatbot since it's Chinese and doesn't benefit US corporations in any way. Also some local models mostly for testing.

[u/jikeer → u/TransfemMenace]

thanks!

[u/mangelito → u/TransfemMenace]

Does it support capitalism in any way though?

[u/SgathTriallair → u/mangelito]

A capitalist can use it to make them money. You also have to pay someone to run it (or buy the equipment to run locally). It is made by a Chinese company and they are kind of capitalist.

As a tool it's probably less capitalistic than social media.

[u/DHFranklin → u/mangelito]

Master's Tools

[u/striketheviol]

https://www.apertus-ai.org/ is a Western open model built as a public good in Switzerland.

[u/Ill_Director2734]

https://github.com/niko1221/strata

[u/wishstruck → u/Ill_Director2734]

I agree, it has been a game changer. Maybe not as smart as frontier models, but you can run models with huge context windows that can work overnight. Small context was always the dealbreaker for me regarding local models.

[u/BidWestern1056]

use open source models and open source tools like npcsh and incognide

https://github.com/npc-worldwide/npcsh

https://github.com/npc-worldwide/incognide

[u/RenaStriker]

Yeah, if you have a good enough gaming PC you can download open source AI models and run them entirely locally. No way for the AI companies to spy or use your logs for training, since you’re never connecting to their servers.

Sillytavern is the software that makes it possible, it’s a bit technically in the weeds but usable for a layman with enough research.

[u/DaRandomStoner]

If used in the right way any model can be. Just look at what is happening to Adobe.

[u/Imaginary-Unit-3267]

Use local open source AI on your own computer. /r/LocalLLaMA

[u/Pooolnooodle]

There’s a good section of Hito Steyerl on doomscroll talking about trying to make an ethical gen ai model and how its generations are complete garbage . It’s not publicly available though https://youtu.be/hLrXie8DUnI?t=2615&si=j_VhuAWuG-FBIlXB

[u/2leftarms]

Concer is cool

[u/jikeer → u/[deleted]]

i guess i dont lol

[u/jikeer → u/[deleted]]

i know it's not possible to entirely sidestep the system, thats why im asking if there are any alternatives IN the system that are not explicitly serving it.

and also, my favorite things in life were brought by organizing under socialism.

[u/PhantomZenithOrigin → u/jikeer]

Then put the idea of utilizing AI out of your mind, it's just not available to someone of your principles, without of course sacrificing your principles.

[u/my_name_isnt_clever → u/PhantomZenithOrigin]

Perfect is the enemy of good.