The thing that puts me off AI the most is that I feel it's only free/cheap while we train it, and in 3 or 4 years it will be a few thousand a month and only available for corporate
I am willing to bet you any amount of money you want that 3-4 years from now, current-generation AI models will cost less in real terms than they do now, not more.
“In real terms” has to be clarified a bit in this context because in the full AI bull case, the value of your labor goes to zero and you can’t afford gruel except from your investments, or to the extent that your overlords deign to gift it to you. Inference per unit gruel will of course continue to get cheaper, so obviously this is the Good Future we should Seek to Bring About
"In real terms" has never once been used to describe an individual's situation. Like if you see a chart that has "real dollars" on it, it doesn't mean, "the author of this chart got a massive inheritance and so their money became less meaningful to them."
You can run distilled LLMs on your phone today that are surprisingly good. In 3-4 years I think an individual could self host for much less than thousands a month.