Don’t underestimate the cost of getting locked into a tool that is 100% guaranteed to rugpull you on both cost and privacy.

Yes. But there is not only OpenAI. There is Gemini, Grok, whatever. If it doesn't become a "the winner takes it all" but a commodity like web hosting, then the payoff breaks down.

You may be correct, but for my hobbyist projects I tend to use the cheaper models to get started, and then I'll switch to a more expensive one if the cheaper model gets stuck.

Unless the actual race is to create an AI Employee that operates and can deliver work without constant supervision. At that level, of course it would be cheaper to pay $2,000 a month straight to Open AI vs hiring a junior SWE

I feel like options for local inference are getting better. AMD has their Strix Halo. Intel's next CPU generation Arrow Lake will have better inference abilities as well.

How clearly are you able to define “actual work” and “toying around?”

Or is this the case of every HN discussion where what you do is “actual work” and what other people do is “toying around?”

> For actual work and not toying around the 10% gap is absolutely worth the cost.

I agree with this... for now. But the hosted commercial models aren't widening the gap as far as I can tell, if anything it appears to be narrowing.

And if the relative delta doesn't increase somehow I don't see any way in which the "AI race" doesn't end in a situation where locally run LLMs on relatively cheap hardware end up being good enough for virtually everyone.

Which in many ways is the best possible outcome, except for the likely severe economic effects when the bubble bursts on the commercial AI side.

This highly depends on the price difference and value you get form those 10%.