alt Hacker NewsWith OpenAI having released 20 and 120B models a while back, I think they recognized that tiny models were never going to be a defensible income stream.
Any value will come from the largest models, and those largest models are unlikely to ever run on consumer hardware within their window of relevancy.
You're missing the point. You very rarely need the biggest and "best" model. This is psychology and nothing more, people always want the "best" and don't often consider "good enough".
Small models are good enough depending on your task. That's the point. A model you can run on your phone or laptop is an incredibly useful tool for a lot of problems even though it isn't the "best" theoretically possible model.