I do not disagree with what you are saying, but I honestly still believe that most of the utility we experience are honestly gonna become very boring very soon that we can just run local... Even if it's a bit more slow who cares, can just run in background while you work on other stuff yourself, read up on things, review other work...

It's not that the utility of it put in question. What is however a giant question mark is how the heck any of the big AI companies are ever gonna get that ROI? Given how many of us are becoming more and more fine with local models that run just fine especially on a good enough computer which most developers have anyway...

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cogman10 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Even more dangerous to the big 2 AI companies is the fact that the 20 different Chinese companies are catching up fast and for a lot lower cost.

Why should someone pick Opus 4.8 when Qwen3.7 Plus produces similar results for about 1/20th the cost.

That sort of pricing disparity is across the board. But further it's becoming more and more apparent that they are doing more with less parameters. That's what's giving the local models their super powers.

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remich 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Because it doesn't. Not for the tasks where using Opus instead of a lower tier model is appropriate, at any rate. Benchmarks show this, as do revealed preferences of actual users. To believe that Qwen is as capable as Opus at 1/20 the cost you have to believe that every person who does not make the choice to use Qwen over Opus for a given task is some mix of ignorant or delusional. This is certainly an opinion you can hold about other engineers, but it's definitely a questionable one at best.

	▲	cogman10 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The benchmarks between the two are close and the engineers that have used both (like myself) can attest that the differences aren't so wide as you might believe. I'd say that yes, ignorance plays a role here because a decent number of engineers are looking strictly at the benchmarks and choosing Opus just for that reason. But I'd also say that a major factor for Opus use is because Opus is being purchased for the engineers by their employers. They don't get to pick which models they are using.