https://www.top500.org/lists/top500/2004/11/ and https://www.top500.org/system/173736/
And while 1100 Macs wouldn't exactly be affordable, the idea of trying to limit commercial data centers gets amusing.
That system was "only" 12,250.00 GFlop/s - I could do that with a small rack of Mac M1 minis now for less than $10k and fewer computers than are in the local grade school computer room.
(and I'm being a bit facetious here) Local authorities looking at power usage and heat dissipation for marijuana growing places might find underground AI training centers.
For example: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cat_August_2010-4.jp... would get classified as /r/standardissuecat
https://stock.adobe.com/fi/images/angry-black-cat/158440149 would get classified as /r/blackcats and /r/stealthbombers
Anyways... that's my hobbyist ML project.
That happened a few months ago with LLaMA. Since then, the open source community has exceeded all expectations democratizing the hardware angle. AI regulators are already checkmated and they don't know it yet. If their goal is to control the use of AI (rather than simply controlling the people building it) then they'd need to go all the way when it comes to tyranny in order to accomplish their goals. Intel would need to execute Order 66 with their Management Engine and operating systems would need to modify their virus scanners to monitor and report the use of linear algebra. It'd be outrageous.