Because everyone in these replies is in complete denial about the physical limits of memory and scaling in general. Ya'll literally living in an alternate reality where model capability increases with a decrease in size, its simply not the case. There will be small focused models that preform well on very narrow tasks, yes, but you will not have "agents" capable of "building most things" running on consumer hardware until more capable (and affordable) consumer hardware exists.
Correct, the progress is not perfectly linear. But do you believe technological progress has stalled forever? If so, I'd get out of tech and start selling bomb shelters.
Do you really think the trend of consumer hardware is heading towards more memory and better specs? Apple's most popular product this year is an 8gb of RAM laptop..
The trend is heading in the opposite direction, less options for strong consumer hardware and towards cloud based products. This is a memory issue more than anything. Nvidia is done selling their ddr7 to gamers and people with AI girlfriends.
Just so that I have your position straight: you actually believe that over the long term, like 10, 20 years, that the amount of RAM in a laptop is going to go down?
It's not out of the realm of possibility, but I just want to make you aware that this would be a very surprising development in computing history.