Some startups and researchers who can't access the most advanced chips are adopting a “frugal AI” approach, building smaller models on open-weight systems Rest of World 2026-04-04 Rina Chandran AI Related Coverage U.S. and China control 90% of AI data centres — the Global South is building a different kind of AI Silicon Canals · Tommy Baker What if you don't have hundreds of billions of dollars to build a foundational model? Or can't get the most advanced Nvidia chips? … Rina Chandran “The Saving Voices Project recently built a speech AI system for the Indigenous Soliga tribe in southern India. As younger members migrated to the cities for jobs, elders in the community feared losing their language. With a small number of speakers, no written script, and no internet access, commercial speech technology was not an option. … @remixtures@tldr.nettime.org · Miguel Afonso Caetano 'Unlike the compute-heavy AI models developed by Silicon Valley, the smaller models being built in India, Indonesia, and elsewhere can run on low-end devices and low-bandwidth networks, and be deployed in sectors such as agriculture, health-care, and education. … @oscarjiminy@aus.social · TinDrum