This began with cloud. When software began running as a front-end in a browser, people began complaining about centralization.

But then it became normal.

The monopolization of knowledge and expertise is the next step. I don't mean as if it were intended, but it is the logical progress given the technological evolution. The cause is inventive structures: the tech is neutral (in my opinion), but the way in which it is used and deployed is subject to and disciplined by capital.

> Will we go back to PCs? As in: are we going to get cheap local hackable frontier AIs at some point?

Forget about AI, the entire PC market is getting killed over this.

As an avid gamer I'm unsure if in 5 years I can even buy a gaming PC anymore. Not even because of cost, but it's unclear if anyone will still make the components anymore.

NVIDIA isn't interested, nor is AMD.

It's worse than centralization. These AI models have gobbled up all the world knowledge. If for some reason the Internet dies we will have no option but to be dependent on these proprietary, for profit, AI models for any information we need.

You might say that this is impossible but look at current trends. A lot of information today is getting shared in the walled gardens of Internet. You have to login to social media to view posts. The Twitter, Reddit threads that were accessible freely now require you to log in. Similar thing is happening across other networks. People are no longer asking questions on Stackoverflow. All those queries are gonig to AI. If someone chooses to not use AI, their options will be limited in future.

Some things will always be true:

- Large centralized compute is more powerful than portable compute

- Wired is better than wireless

- The public wants new things

- The tech industry grows to use/“use” the available processing power

As long as you’re not continuously comparing to AI in large centralized compute, what you’re really looking for is “when does portable compute become powerful enough to run AI models that are capable of meaningful work” and I’d say we’re already there and it’s getting better.

It was the same with cloud and software as a service. We underuse the power of our local machines and pay high cost for modest resources that are bandwidth constrained for most users.

Don't think of it as a step back, it's just a point in a familiar cycle:

New application of computing requires a lot of compute -> compute centralizes -> compute improves, smaller, faster, cheaper -> compute decentralizes -> new application of compute is found -> (return to beginning of cycle)

There has been a relatively strong local model community since the days of llama-3. IMO, the number of non-technical people interested in qlora, adapters, parameter fine tuning etc is remarkable.

Yes, we will. Eventually, specialized AI hardware (ASICs) will emerge that will be good for AI, but not much anything else. PCs are general purpose computers that are good at many things, but excel at few. There are quite a few startups working on it already.

The only way this may happen is when the internet were to be somehow destroyed.

Which would not be all too bad. It would also mean the end of stupid SaaS subscription services, and mass surveillance, adtech. And shitty propaganda.

And your local AI could emulate the good parts of the internet.

You know what that era has in common with fossil fuel? It takes a very specialized infrastructure and supply chain that you can limit with lobbying efforts and gatekeeping so that all the money only flows to you and your cronies.

> It feels like a step back towards mainframe era.

:insert Will Smith presenting meme:

The Cloud

back to the mainframe era came with the insane proliferation of cloud everything, not with ai

Yes we will and we all know it. All those are raw materials.

I never left the PC era, but the RAM prices kind of hurt me. I don't know when I would want to buy a new PC - it seems to be 3x the cost for barely any real benefits over the status quo.

Yupppp. My current conspiracy theory, with all of the increasing hardware costs and how easy decompilation projects are, is that there is going to be a major push to eradicate consumer hardware and keep all software in the cloud.

Everybody will have a mini PC for the sole purpose of streaming content, with no storage to keep anything on it.

[dead]

There's a lot of hacking going on right now with small (qwen 3.x and gemma 4 based) and medium (deepseek flash and others) models alike.

Have an agentic enough setup and they'll do anything that the biggest closed models can. They'll also do more, making them the true frontier.

A sensible point of entry is a 2899$ Mac mini.

If you're not partaking that's only on you.