OP Here. It is my firm belief that the only realistic use of AI in the future is either locally on-device for almost free, or in the cloud but way more expensive then it is today. The latter option will only bemusedly for tasks that humans are more expensive or much slower in. This Gemma 4 model gives me hope for a future Siri or other with iPhone and macOS integration, “Her” (as in the movie) style.
> or in the cloud but way more expensive then it is today. Why? It's widely understood that the big players are making profit on inference. The only reason they still have losses is because training is so expensive, but you need to do that no matter whether the models are running in the cloud or on your device. If you think about it, it's always going to be cheaper and more energy-efficient to have dedicated cloud ha…
If you add in the cost of training, it’s not profitable.
Not including the cost of training is a bit like saying the only cost of a cup of coffee is the paper cup it’s in. The only way OpenAI gets to charge for inference is by selling a product people can’t get elsewhere for much cheaper, which means billions in R&D costs. But because of competition, each model effectively has a “shelf life”.