← Back to the wire

Learning to use local AI is exciting, overwhelming, and frustrating

AnnouncementProductOct 11, 2026

A writer testing local AI on an M5 Ultra Mac Studio installed the free, open-source Hermes Agent and ran the 125-billion-parameter Qwen 3.8 Flash Next model, using the machine's 256GB of unified memory. Early tasks included a daily morning briefing, sorting a 400-game Steam library by genre, and analyzing sensitive financial data kept off cloud services from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, or Anthropic. The writer cites privacy, echoing Apple's local-AI pitch, as the appeal.

Receipt № 23341 source · awaiting confirmation ◐

Evidence

1source· awaiting independent confirmation

No score is assigned. Sources and their independence are shown in the citation chain below.

Citation chain · 1 source

OpenAICompanyGoogleCompanyAnthropicCompanyMicrosoftCompanyAppleCompany
Canonical: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1008484/learning-local-ai-hermes-qwen-model-mac-studio-testing-diary-progress