In the wake of the hype around generative AI, Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, conducted an interesting experiment. The other day, he demonstrated how a small AI model Llama from Meta
successfully runs on a 26-year-old Dell PC with 128 MB of RAM running Windows 98. According to Andreessen, humanity could have communicated with generative AI decades ago, if such AI had been created at that time.
Image source: pcmag.com
Andreessen did not disclose the specific Llama model used for the test, making it difficult to replicate his experiment. It is worth noting that Meta’s Llama AI model consumes less computing power than an array of much larger models, but still has some impressive capabilities.
Andreessen suggested that running Llama on a 26-year-old Dell PC running Windows 98 meant that people could have had “human-like interactions” with their computers decades ago, at least if generative AI had existed then: “All those old PCs could have been literally smart all along. We could have been talking to our computers for 30 years.”
He believes that such interactions could have happened much earlier if key players had seized the opportunity during the previous AI boom in the 1980s: “A lot of smart people in the ’80s thought this would all happen then.”
Image source: Andreessen Horowitz
Andreessen’s claims are supported by an earlier experiment by Exo Labs, in which the researchers were able to run a modified version of Llama 2 on a Pentium II-based Windows 98 PC. Achieving this was no easy task. It required compatible PS/2 peripherals, a viable way to transfer the required files to the legacy device, and the compilation of modern code for the legacy device and adaptation of the model itself.