- This event has already taken place.
Finally Free: Local AI – Alessandro Piemontesi – ASTRATALK
How to choose and use local models without relying entirely on the decisions of major platforms.
The artificial intelligence market is moving quickly: prices are constantly changing, models are being discontinued, terms of use are shifting, and companies are springing up and disappearing within a year. Those who use these tools for work or in their daily lives find themselves subject to decisions made elsewhere, with no say in the matter.
There is an alternative, and it’s more within reach than it seems: running generative models directly on your own computer. In this Astratalk, Alessandro Piemontesi starts with the big picture—who is developing these models today, what their motivations are, and what their vulnerabilities are—and arrives at a concrete question: what does it take to run them on your own machine, and what are the benefits of doing so?
We’ll also talk about scale. A model with a few billion parameters and one with a few hundred don’t do the same things, don’t require the same hardware, and don’t serve the same purposes: understanding this difference is the step that separates curiosity from everyday use.
Here, “freedom” means one specific thing: continuing to work as before even when the service you were using shuts down, raises its prices, or revises its terms of service.
Who it's for: people who already use AI and are starting to wonder where their data ends up; people who are observing AI from the outside and want to understand what it's all about, without getting carried away or panicking; people who work with confidential documents—their own or others'—and can't afford to upload them to an external service.
What brings to home who participates:
- A clear overview of today's AI market and its vulnerabilities
- the criterion for determining when a local model is appropriate and when it is not
- What difference does the size of a model make? Explained in simple terms
- What, specifically, do you need to get started?
This Astratalk serves as an introduction to the three-evening workshop that Alessandro will lead at the Lab in September, where participants will put all of this into practice using the association’s workstations: documents, bills, medical reports, and family budgets.
Come see for yourself.
📍 Asperastra Innovation Lab – Corso Cavour 2/2, Trieste
🗓️ August 29, 2026
🕕 5:30 p.m.
