[mullingitover]

The point of this loss leading is to properly hoover up the money in the pockets of enterprise customers, get them locked into the idea that they need the latest and greatest cloud-based model, while simultaneously starving everyone of the memory they'd need in order to run competent models locally.

In not-too-distant future we're going to be running better models on our phones than we can buy access to today in the cloud. Skate where the puck is going: soak the customers until that day comes.

[port11]

I think your first paragraph is spot on, while the second is fairly incorrect. Hardware isn’t getting cheaper at a reasonable pace, and datacenters will keep depleting the market. State-of-the-art models are very, very far from being run on your own hardware.

[mullingitover]

> State-of-the-art models are very, very far from being run on your own hardware.

Still, the models will only get smarter and more efficient as the hardware gets cheaper. The timeframe may be debatable but the outcome really isn't.

[port11]

I could accept that the end result might be what you propose, but training models is getting tricky, running them more so, now that hardware is becoming pricier. The future might simply be a few feudal lords permitting you to run the best models on their equipment, and a few good open models that most will struggle to run.