the questions you type into an ai are the unfinished version of your thinking just like
β a business idea you haven't shown your cofounder
β a contract you don't fully understand, or
β a message you're afraid to send...
and we've gotten used to handing all of it to servers we will never see.
that habit exists because the best models live in data centers, so using one has always meant sending your question somewhere else..
@boar_app tests the opposite idea.
it's an open source Android app that keeps a small model and a library of about 5,300 Wikipedia based articles on your phone
so after a one-time setup download, it can answer with no signal and you can add your own documents to it as well.
the model is small, about 1.5 billion parameters, and the documents i read admit it's good at simple questions and slips on long ones.
it works like an open book exam, because the app searches the library on your phone, the model writes the answer from what it finds
and it shows you the articles it used, so the question never has to leave your hand for you to get something useful back.
what it shows is that a private question can be answered by a device in your own hand, and that nobody should have to choose between a useful assistant and a private one.