Local models are already useful today. The next milestone is getting this level of performance onto truly affordable hardware.

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SV_BubbleTime 4 hours ago | parent [-]

NVidia has less than zero reason to ship cards ideal for this at low prices.

AMD’s stock price reflects a hope they launch a CUDA alternative. But this is unlikely for the near future.

There is a lot of interest in preventing China coming in with cheap AI hardware.

So I expect the direction to be good local models that few can run effectively.

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theplumber 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The Chinese will flood the market with cheap AI chips just like they did with EV cars. As consumers we can’t thank them enough.

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omnimus 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's already moving that way with Huawei AI chips.

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binary132 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think it will eventually result in regulation and a potential grey market, and/or implosion of the centralized LLM services — I doubt they can keep hardware from becoming cheaper forever, and diminishing returns will make consumer hardware suitable for all but the hardest problems. At that point, the hardware “moat” will be completely gone and have become an extreme unrecoverable sunk cost.

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theplumber 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Well you have tariffs and bans on EVs as well so surely there will be bans and tariffs as well on AI products and chips but for people who really want the chips and models we know they can get it. I expect a market like it used to be for pirated content

	▲	kajman an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I'm cautiously optimistic that anti-conpetitive action against hardware will fail. There's a lot of money willing to fight for cheaper inference. The same can't be said for providing consumers with cheaper cars. I can't say I'm as optimistic about there continuing to be an open market for foreign LLMs.