alt Hacker NewsThis framing local LLMs as free is stupid. Basically pay 100+ months worth of API costs up front isn't free in the slightest. And it will be slower than non-local, your hardware will be outdated in 12 months and probably won't be able to run SOTA at anywhere near non-local speed in max 20 months
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cicko • today at 8:41 AM
True. But there are other meanings of "free". I.e. nobody can say "from now on you no longer have access to model X because you're an asshole"
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Yeah, it glosses over a gigantic capital expenditure. It's sort of like saying that an open source modern CPU architecture allows you to build your own CPU "for free" (provided that you own and operate a fab).