Yes, but we are getting close to the point where the difference exists, but it is less and less significant. Tbh, Qweb27b is perfectly find for a lot of tasks; anecdotally, the difference lies less and less in quality of responses, but in speed. Local models have a hard time there for a reason ( the cheapest stuff you can get now is stuff like previously mentioned 128gb ryzen ai ).
So trade-offs are there, but do those matter to all people the same way ( are they not equal in the same way to everyone )?
I would say from experience, that yes the local models today are as good as the old frontier models. That was my original claim. I am sticking too it. It won't be long before local models match say fable 5.x as well. And people will still say "it's not as good as x". No it's not but it's as good as the thing everyone freaked out about 6 months ago. If that wasn't good enough for all y'all then then why did you all use it? Exactly.
This is the elephant in the room that OpenAI and Anthropic specifically aren't talking about -- when "good enough" is surpassed.
Because there are a large number of use cases (and large sub-portions of others) where genius-level AI isn't required.
Which means once that threshold is surpassed in people's relevant fields, available margin on that is going to collapse to commodity levels.
It's difficult to see how either pure-play AI company maintains its valuation once that happens. Their TAM is based on capturing a big chunk of all work, not just that which requires the highest intelligence.
