AI That Is “Good (More Than) Enough” — And Actually Ours

These days, when we talk about AI, we mostly argue about which model is smarter — and we may have forgotten to ask where it sits, and who holds the off switch. The second question matters more than it looks, because a model’s capability changes every quarter, while the structure of who controls the game — who controls the Second Brain, the gathering of our thinking and the body of work we accumulate — is something we will have to design and manage deliberately, because its structural and security consequences will stay with us for decades.

Let me start with the drawbacks, because if I start with the advantages I will sound like a salesman.

Local AI is weaker. A model running on your machine is not in the same class as the top models in the cloud (Frontier AI). For work that needs long, multi-layered reasoning, it still cannot compete. If someone tells you that installing a program gets you the equivalent for free, that person is not explaining technology — they are selling something. Chasing view counts, for instance (that they should not be earning).

Having AI installed on our own machine is not free either, and it still needs an internet connection (otherwise where would the latest information in the world come from?). There is no monthly fee, true — but you pay a lump sum instead, in the form of RAM and a graphics card. People who say it saves you tens of thousands usually forget to add the cost of the machine they had to buy into the equation.

Reading this far, you may wonder what the point is.

Because what we should be buying is not capability — it is territory

Data processed on our machine ends on our machine. That does not mean it is a hundred percent safe — the machine can still be hacked, and the software itself can still send usage data back if you do not turn that off. But it removes an entire layer of risk: the layer where your data travels out of the house and spends the night on someone else’s machine, under terms they can change unilaterally at any time.

For business contracts, strategy drafts, health records — or even the things we are simply curious about — should these really slip out of our own keeping??

There is another value worth not overlooking: having an assistant that is more than smart enough, that is with us at all times, that keeps improving, and that can stay with us indefinitely. It works when the internet goes down — that much is not up for debate. On a plane, in a province where the signal does not reach, or on the day every provider fails at once, a tool that works without asking anyone’s permission is simply a tool that works. It can genuinely help us and the people around us in an emergency. That value really should not be overlooked.

The approach I think actually works

Do not pick a side — use both. Work that needs heavy thinking and holds no secrets, send it to the cloud. Proactive work that has to accumulate your thinking and imagination, or that carries risk — names of real people, real numbers, anything that would cause trouble if it leaked — keep on your machine.

The test is simpler than you would expect. Just ask yourself: if this information, in both its ideas and its risks, surfaced somewhere it should not, will we still be able to live tomorrow normally and happily? If the answer is no, do not send it off your machine.

Getting started is no longer as hard as it once was. Tools like LM Studio or Jan.ai install with a click and are ready to use — not a single line of code required (which is not to say there is nothing to learn — it still rests on our own thinking and our own diligence).

Decide, and act

This is not about being afraid of technology, and it is not about opposing anyone. It is about the fact that we are currently taking the thinking work of an entire country and placing it on the machines of a handful of companies we have never spoken with, whose boards we did not elect, and with whom we cannot renegotiate a single clause.

Having an AI of your own does not make you free of that. But at least it means you still hold a choice in your hands.

Having a choice is one indispensable, core property of what the word sovereignty means … and nothing better will ever happen unless we start to “try” and to “practise”, beginning today.