alt Hacker NewsI expect it will never change. In two years if there is a local option as good as GPT-5 there will be a much better cloud option and you'll have the same tradeoffs to make.
Replies
I grew up in a time when listening to an mp3 was too computationally expensive and nigh impossible for the average desktop. Now tiny phones can decode high def video realtime due to CPU extensions.
And my phone uses a tiny, tiny amount of power, comparatively, to do so.
CPU extensions and other improvements will make AI a simple, tiny task. Many of the improvements will come from robotics.
Next two years probably. But at some point we will either hit scales where you really dont need anything better (lets say cloud is 10000 token/s and local is 5000 token/s. Makes no difference for most individual users) or we will hit som wall where ai doesnt get smarter but cost of hardware continues to fall
There will always be something better on big data center hardware.
However, small models are continuing to improve at the same time that large RAM capacity computing hardware is becoming cheaper. These two will eventually intersect at a point where local performance is good enough and fast enough.
I’d be surprised by that outcome. At one point databases were cutting edge tech with each engine leap frogging each other in capability. Still the proprietary db often have features that aren’t matched elsewhere.
But the open db got good enough that you need to justify not using them with specific reasons why.
That seems at least as likely an outcome for models as they continue to improve infinitely into the stars.
Maybe, but my phone has become is a "good enough" computer for most tasks compared to a desktop or my laptop.
Seems plausible the same goes for AI.
You know there's a ceiling to all this with the current LLM approaches right? They won't become that much better, its even more likely they will degrade. There are cases of bad actors attacking LLMs by feeding it false information and propaganda. I dont see this changing in the future.
What is even a point of having a self hosted gpt5 equivalent that's not into petabytes of knowledge?
It might change once the companies switch away from lighting VC money on fire mode and switch to profit maximizing mode.
I remember Uber and AirBnB used to seem like unbelievably good deals, for example. That stopped eventually.
Why would AI be one of the few areas where locally-hosted options can't reach "good enough"?