To get good answers from a small AI model, give it the material instead of asking it to remember, say exactly what you want in the first line, ask for one thing per message, and use it to rewrite rather than invent. Small models read well and know little. Play to that and they do good work.
What should I expect from a small AI model?
A model small enough to run on your phone, like the ones in Nashi, is a capable writer and a reasonable explainer. It is not a search engine, not a calculator, and not a legal department. Use it for what it is good at, and it is genuinely useful. Ask it for the population of a town in 1890 and it will guess with full confidence.
Why does a small model make things up?
Small models know less, but they read fine. Paste the email you are replying to, the paragraph you want rewritten, the notes you want summarised. Everything you give the model in the conversation is available to it; everything you don't, it will make up.
Nashi's models see about 3,000 words at once. If a conversation runs longer than that, the oldest turns fall out of view. For a long task, start a fresh conversation and paste in only what matters.
How should I phrase a prompt for a small model?
Small models follow clear instructions well and infer intent poorly. Compare:
"Here are my notes from the meeting."
with
"Turn these meeting notes into five bullet points for an email to my team. Keep names. Under 100 words."
The second gets what you asked for the first time. Length, format, audience and tone are the four things worth stating every time.
Can I ask for several things at once?
"Summarise this, then translate it to Spanish, then make it funnier" is three tasks, and a small model will usually do the first well and drift on the rest. Ask, read, ask again. The conversation keeps the context.
Should I ask it to write from scratch?
Ask the model to improve, shorten, restructure or change the tone of text you wrote, and it shines. Ask it to write a factual article from scratch, and you have to check every claim. That is true of every language model; it is simply more true of small ones.
When do I need a bigger model?
Download a larger model in Nashi, if your device shows one as a good fit (see choosing a model in Nashi), when you keep hitting one of these:
- It loses the thread in a long conversation.
- It ignores half of a detailed instruction.
- You need code that runs, not code that looks right.
- You need it to reason through several steps, not just recall.
And for a few things, use a cloud model and accept the trade: current events, obscure facts, long documents, anything where being wrong is expensive. Nashi is the place for everything you would rather not send anywhere.
What is it good for, day to day?
- Drafting and rewriting emails, messages and posts.
- Summarising notes, articles you paste in, and your own rambling.
- Explaining a concept in plainer words, or at a different level.
- Brainstorming names, titles, outlines and options.
- Translating short passages between common languages.
- Being a patient rubber duck at 2 a.m., with no server on the other end.