> within a few years we will be running local models as good as today’s frontier models

I seriously doubt it. Scaling is already strained (don't buy into the "exponential" hype). And, in any case, the competition will be against the frontier models that will exist in two years.

> I seriously doubt it. Scaling is already strained (don't buy into the "exponential" hype). And, in any case, the competition will be against the frontier models that will exist in two years.

The big question I'd be asking if I was investing in one of the big players is if those changes are "it can do 99% instead of 97% of the tasks a user will throw at it" (at which point going local and taking back cost control/ownership makes a lot of sense, especially for companies) OR "it will fully replace a human with better output"?

I already don't need Opus for a lot of my tasks and choose instead faster/cheaper ones.

The former is a company that's gonna be trying to sell mainframes against the PC. The latter is a company that is in potentially huge demand, assuming the replaced humans end up with other ways of getting money to still be able to buy stuff in the first place. ;)

> I seriously doubt it. Scaling is already strained (don't buy into the "exponential" hype). And, in any case, the competition will be against the frontier models that will exist in two years.

But even if scaling plateaus for the frontier models, maybe distillation will improve to the point where smaller more manageable models can reach the same plateau. That would be great for local.

I would readjust your convictions.

We are only 2-4 years away from consumer grade immutable-weight ASICs.