I'm just trying to understand what the particular uses people have for them.

My raw data alone is terabytes, and it takes hundreds of GB sometimes to run very simple analyses. So there's no way I can have a local AI orchestrating the analyses locally.

But I realize some people have different kinds of data. So I'm interested to hear how exactly people use local models.

The point where it'd make sense for me is if someone makes a compact machine with 512 of unified memory in a couple of years and it costs less than a down payment for a house...