Could volunteers build open small AI models from daily use data?

A proposed approach would put a simple recording layer around today’s command-line AI tools and collect the prompts people enter together with the outputs they accept or produce. With enough volunteers, this could create large datasets for making distilled LLMs.

Training would still need major computing power, but it might not need to be fast, so the work could be spread across spare gaming GPUs. The hardest part would likely be coordination and trust.

A central group would need to collect the data, use it for the promised goal, and release the model publicly. Starting with small models and reliably releasing them could build a track record that attracts more volunteers.