Unless you can run the LLM locally, on a computer you own, you are now completely dependent on a remote centralized system to do your work. Whoever controls that system can arbitrarily raise the prices, subtly manipulate the outputs, store and do anything they want with the inputs, or even suddenly cease to operate. And since, according to this article, only the latest and greatest LLM is acceptable (and I've seen that exact same argument six months ago), running locally is not viable (I've seen, in a recent discussion, someone mention a home server with something like 384G of RAM just to run one LLM locally).
To those of us who like Free Software because of the freedom it gives us, this is a severe regression.
* Not even counting cellular data carriers, I have a choice of at least five ISPs in my area. And if things get really bad, I can go down to my local library to politely encamp myself and use their WiFi.
* I've personally no need for a cloud provider, but I've spent a lot of time working on cloud-agnostic stuff. All the major cloud providers (and many of the minors) provide compute, storage (whether block, object, or relational), and network ingress and egress. As long as you don't deliberately tie yourself to the vendor-specific stuff, you're free to choose among all available providers.
* I run Linux. Enough said.
* Hmm, what kind of software do you write that pays your bills?
* And your setup doesn't require any external infrastructure to be kept up to date?
And many do. The US isn't the entire world, you know.
> ...what kind of software do you write that pays your bills?
B2B software that allows anyone to run their workloads with most any cloud provider, and most any on-prem "cloud". The entire point of this software is to abstract out the underlying infrastructure so that businesses can walk away from a particular vendor if that vendor gets too stroppy.
> ...your setup doesn't require any external infrastructure...
It's Gentoo Linux, so it runs largely on donated infra (and infra paid for with donations). But -unlike Windows or OS X users- if I get sick of what the Gentoo steering committee are doing, I can go to another distro (or just fucking roll my own should things get truly dire). That's the point of my comment.