I get that Maple allows private usage and is E2EE which is nice. But the available models are only open source which are not as powerful as the closed platforms such as ChatGPT 5.2.
If it was uncensored that would be OK, I guess--a trade off--but I tried to bring up a controversial topic and I got lectured as if it was my annual mandatory diversity training.
Then there is the cost--18usd/month? Is that not the same as OpenAI?
So let me get this straight, I pay the same, get an inferior model, and get the same censorship, but the CIA can't easily see my search query for how many eggs are healthy to eat in a day? Is that the deal?
If privacy is such an issue should you not just spin up your own LLM locally?
It seems for those just looking to get AI for corn ppq.ai is by far the superior option. Has the closed models available and allows paying with corn only for the searches you need (on demand, no subscription). But, yeh, the CIA learns all about your fascination with the religion and diet of the Roman Republic. Probably an OK trade off?
Am I missing something? I know the Maple guys are posting here so would appreciate correction if I'm off base with any of this.
If you were to spin up your own llm locally and report back, I'd be very keen on hearing how you did it and what the outcome is. I'd definitely zap it.
I hear that goose is a good place to start.
I did it ages back when the boom first started and the Facebook weights were "leaked" or whatever. I downloaded a 7gb file and used some CLI tool to interact with it. It was completely uncensored and very funny to make it say controversial things. But for me personally I want access via a service I can pay in corn for. So ppq ai is great and if there was a way to use an uncucked open model with Maple then that would be great too.
I don’t input personal, private things into the cloud models you’re comparing them to. I could run a decent local model to do the same thing but there’s a large upfront cost in terms of time and money.
Another way to view this is that if you’re not technical (in the unwilling and helpless way) you don’t have much of a prayer of getting a local model running.
Thanks. I get that. If their model wasn't so censored then it would be a great trade off for people without the time/skills/resources to set up a model locally. But with the censorship it feels like you are paying the same to get a hobbled ChatGPT (albeit with some privacy advantages)
Knowing the founders, I don’t think they want to models to be censored so perhaps that’ll change at some point.
privacy matters. maple and ppq and routstr are just competative implementations of private cloud AI. as they should be, there is a demand for them. but yea, I would agree with the notion that you should set up your own local LLM if you really care about privacy. fine tuning/RAGing your own model on open weights is, at least the way i understand it, the best path towards sovereign AI.
Isn't the hardware requirement to spin up your local model pretty significant?
ppq.ai looks useful. Thanks
I think you do get it. Maple.ai isn't for everyone and you wrote some good reasons why. I'm sure for some it is worth it because they don't have the time or knowledge to spin up their own LLM. The real question is do they have a big enough market to sustain what they are doing. Regardless, the work they are doing is interesting and I wish them well. If not enough people want it... they will fail. Markets work.
Thanks. I just don't get why they've set their censorship level to mid 40s Progressive Portland Wine Aunt. Seems like a missed opportunity.
The open models aren't very good. Deeepseek boasts a lot, but that Chinese model is trained on all the woke-ass fake news we all hate. It made me realize that the future through the lens of AI will be whoever is the loudest and most consistent in text.