For what purpose do you use local LLMs?

Posted by mrscript_lt@reddit | LocalLLaMA | View on Reddit | 12 comments

A lot of discussions which model is the best, but I keep asking myself, why would average person need expensive setup to run LLM locally when you can get ChatGPT 3.5 for free and 4 for 20usd/month?

My story: For day to day questions I use ChatGPT 4. It seems impracticall running LLM constantly or spinning it off when I need some answer quickly.

I come to local LLM word, because I have specific use-case, I need to generate lots of descriptions from my database to be published on web. In this case, its seems cheaper to run locally than to pay for ChatGPT API. But my use case is complex one and I'm still at the begining of my journey. Likely I will need fine tuning, RAG etc.

What are purposes you use local LLMs and why ChatGPT is not an option?