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Comment by tempaccount5050 | Hacker News Reader

Because it doesn't even come close to frontier models in intelligence/speed/price. I can run my 3090 nonstop and rack up an electricity bill that costs more than a subscription and get worse results that are slower. They are ok for simple/non complex things, but that's not really what I need AI for.

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I feel the opposite. I do need AI for simple things. Complex things are usually so ill-defined that the actual bottleneck takes place in meatspace, not in my IDE.

Well, it is currently cheaper because it is massively subsidized. That will change when subsidies stop. I don’t think it is a good argument.

The claim was "It is cheaper", not "It will be cheaper". Until it actually _is_ cheaper, it doesn't make much sense to purchase $10k+ in hardware to run local models that are still worse than the frontier offerings.

> Until it actually _is_ cheaper, it doesn't make much sense to purchase

Once it is cheaper, there will be more demand so it will no longer be cheaper. Buying now gets current prices (though demand is still fairly high).

No it's not. AI products are quite often subsidized. AI inference very certainly is not.

There are more and more independent AI inference providers without VC backing that serve open weight models on a ~cost-plus basis that show that subsidies are not significant for AI inference.

if only there was a place that was naturally cold to take advantage of airflow for cooling and cheap renewable electricity thats always on...

are you saying aluminum smelters are going to convert to ai datacenters?

Imagine if they did and then redirected the heat from those data centers to warm their greenhouses and then to warm homes.

honestly really surprised they haven't gone full ham on AI data centers.

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