In my opinion, this is similar to the earlier internet and computers. Few households or individuals had access to state of the art computers, it was primarily research or more well-off individuals. Most random people didn’t really know what it was and certainly didn’t use one.

Now today, AI is very expensive and not readily accessible to most people without paying a good amount.

The early internet became now you can just get a free phone from phone companies so long as you get their extras. Then you get a ton of subscriptions and ad-ons, but you don’t have to spend money, could just use youtube with ads etc.

Local AI would similarly shift this dynamic to paying for access to plug-in’s and tools for your local AI to be able to use. Like how the subscription model works right now.

With local model advancements, such as specifically Qwen 3.6 35B A3B, this future is becoming more likely by the year IMO.