Not sure if this was posted. But I think it's highly relevant to us.
Posted by Paradigmind@reddit | LocalLLaMA | View on Reddit | 184 comments
Posted by Paradigmind@reddit | LocalLLaMA | View on Reddit | 184 comments
artisticMink@reddit
One of the many things to take away from this, even if it hurts, is that AI Companies aren't your friends.
Yes, Qwen, Z.AI, Deepseek, Kimi and Mistral. All your darlings will tighten the valve or cut you off completely the very second it's more profitable for them. And they actively contribute to the development in the video.
lantern_lol@reddit
I agree these companies don't necessarily have our best interest at heart, but I think it's a bit more nuanced than "it's only about profit". Seems from their actions that a lot of the Chinese (and "Singaporean") companies are being incentivised (by CCP) to open source models and/or undercut us providers on price. It's a pretty smart play imo. They are ahead in pretty much everything but frontier AI (energy, infra, manufacturing, etc.); by devaluing AI they are not only getting consumers on their side (good for their image), but they also directly erode the single advantage propping up the entire US economy.
Timely-Perception-26@reddit
holy cow Even the damn church has gone fully commercial. Charities, games. Everything revolves around money. Always.
The only reason not to rip you off today is to get you hooked so we can rip you off tomorrow.
It's 2026, and we're practically living in the golden age of capitalism all over again, and yet some people are still rooting for corporations. lol
lantern_lol@reddit
I'm not rooting for corporations, when did I say this? I'm about as anti-corporation as you can get; and I am also very much against nationalism/power in general (CPP, US or otherwise). In fact I think what the world needs right now is simply a movement based on the "de-leveraging of concentrated power"; this concentration (corporation, nation state or otherwise) imo is the source of all of the problems we are facing.
I was making the point that globally, AI is also very much about power/geopolitics/propaganda rather than just being about short term profit; and that this is exactly what the actions of Chinese labs imply. If US companies completely screw over the consumer (stealth-nerfing models, price hikes, reduction in token subsidies, etc.), then the China stands to gain long-term from exploiting purely short-term, quarterly-profit-based ideologies.
I was simply pointing out that from a game-theoretic perspective, if the US screws the consumer they also shoot themselves in the foot; because they open the door to Chinese models/data-collection/propaganda/influence. The demand vacuum will very much get filled, and I think it is a likely scenario (especially as many of the US labs are going for IPO).
It's not all black and white my guy. Fuck corporations, but also fuck the black-and-white thinking they are pushing on everyone.
CalBearFan@reddit
Don't forget those models are also a great way to share propaganda the CCP wants out there. Ask any Chinese model about Tiananmen Square or the treatment of the Uyghurs and you'll see how censored these models are. Much like the TikTok algorithm, the CCP knows that subtle propaganda is very powerful.
whakahere@reddit
Ask any American model and you get the same crap propaganda as well. As a European, I was fine with America leading until last year. Now, America, can it be trusted? Their companies are the one's killing home compute.
retrojoe@reddit
What American propaganda can you point to?
nanobot_1000@reddit
For starters - cable TV news, mainstream media, anything that comes out of the White House
retrojoe@reddit
What model is giving you cable news and WH talking points?
svachalek@reddit
Not exactly a WH talking point but I was asking Claude about all the NASDAQ and S&P rules changing to accommodate the SpaceX IPO and it was saying the rule changes were necessary and important to the freedom of the market, just like for Tesla.
If you look into it yourself you may agree that’s a real stretch for an honest take.
ansmo@reddit
Ask Chatgpt if the Trump DoJ's recent prosecutions of James Comey and Leticia James were politically motivated.
DataPhreak@reddit
Any model connected to search.
nanobot_1000@reddit
Grok
In all seriousness, ChatGPT and Claude chats pull a lot from the web - Claude seems quicker to distrust misinformation.
In general the damage from concentrating compute power that these closed frontier companies and the cloud/datacenter industry are doing is far greater than spreading propaganda or inducing "AI psychosis" IMO. They do not want us perpetually enabled with the same productivity/automation gains they are trying to monetize via subscriptions.
whitefritillary@reddit
it’s very hard to get it to be even the slightest bit critical of capitalism. or israel. US propaganda is just as pervasive, you just don’t notice it.
anotheruser323@reddit
Is lobbying just legal bribery? Is antropic/openai/etc an amoral company? And other such obvious questions.
I had a "chat" with chatgpt about their (USA-ian) lobbying. It went so hard to make it clear to me that it is not just bribery, that it is somehow different. Asked deepseek and it went "They are technically different, but yea more or less" first message.
They are definitely weight-washing their models to make themselves look good. Just ask grok about musk.. Or to be relevant/topical ask them about datacenters (haven't tried this one).
And the US has laws that say they can make a company do anything and it has to keep quiet. And now they are openly saying that they should "vet" the models before release.
As someone not in either china or usa, they are the same. Chinese models should at least have a more objective view on life stuff. (I mostly use LLM-s for trivial, non-political, stuff)
itsdikey@reddit
Loosely related, this reminded me of a joke
American man is on plane from USSR and seated next to Soviet guy
Soviet Guy "So how did you like Soviet Union" American Guy "You have a quite fascinating propaganda, and what do you think of America?" SG "I also like your propaganda" AG "What propaganda?" SG "Exactly"
Severian_0@reddit
I would prefer China a thousand times over. There is no Chinese oligarch controlling the government and doing a Sieg Heil in public. The Big Tech psychopaths with an AI monopoly would turn this world into a dystopia.
whitefritillary@reddit
they hated them because they told them the truth.
Honest-Monitor-2619@reddit
You'll never guess what happens when you ask an American model about Palestine.
Agreeable_User_Name@reddit
In others words, it's all about profit. It's just that profit for CCP is not the same as the one for American companies.
putrasherni@reddit
best interest at heart ?
tf are you on about, they literally release open weight models for us plebs and peasants to use
you guys are out of your fucking minds
Smirkwood9@reddit
Whoever reaches singularity first wins. At that point, every other company will be outpaced, and one AI company will dominate. Then we have to hope it somehow has a moral compass and doesn't deem humanity a problem to be solved, Or that whomever made it doesn't change our perception of the world and everything in it to control us. Who's to say they couldn't literally delete all banking records, erase people from existence or create fake threats to keep us controlled. Do whatever you can to stop the data centers.
Spervo@reddit
Singularity is a collective delusion and isn't happening. Racing towards it today is like racing towards a bridge to heaven and any money spent in service of that goal will never pay off.
nanobot_1000@reddit
Exactly, this is the whole "we're in an AI arms race to doom with China so we gotta invest trillions in datacenters from everyone's tax dollars" fallacy taken from the US cold war playbook.
grunt_monkey_@reddit
When gguf?
artisticMink@reddit
AGI-70T-GGUF-Heretic.Opus-7.3-distill-UD-Q1_K_XL-00001-of-99997.gguf
relmny@reddit
"All your darlings" I take you don't use local llms?
Anyway, nobody can take what has already being shared and downloaded.
And trying to put all AI companies in the same bag (with something like "they are not screwing you now, but they will") makes no sense to me.
Monkey_1505@reddit
Deepseek seems ideologically commited to open source.
Alan_Silva_TI@reddit
I posted a thread a while back saying “hardware is the only moat.”
Some people read it as a cue to buy hardware for resale. My real point, in line with the video, is that hardware costs will keep climbing unless there’s a breakthrough, and the industry is using AI to push anti‑consumer tactics.
Even if prices are high now, buying hardware (that you can afford) now is one of the best investments if you work with tech or plan to use AI to improve your workflow.
PracticlySpeaking@reddit
We have been enjoying a prolonged period of very cheap semiconductors, coupled with VC-funded subsidies for everything AI.
All that has changed.
Paradigmind@reddit (OP)
Just to make clear: I'm not hating on AI. I love local AI and use it myself. But Big Tech and Data Centers are fucking our ability to run these models locally in the future, driven by their greed.
The consumer market is basically dead at the moment. I hope China and other countries will fill the market with capable and affordable hardware soon.
Ikinoki@reddit
I don't think OpenAI has a contract. I think there's an underlying nefarious reason for all AI doing it, OpenAI is HEAVILY subsidised by the owners of the world. They just blocked worldwide private supply of RAM with non-existent money.
What I think is they are trying to lock out consumers from having AI at home. The concerted news lying about the contract and not mentioning that the contract was NON-BINDING completely drove the prices up by mid-level AI players. Which resulted in shit we are now. They are going to sell their ram soon so it will drive the prices down. Especially with the large tech shift incoming.
Unfortunately the main issue is that the consumers and small business dependent on RAM will falter because when ram will be sold it will be too late, and after that the next jump will be next to impossible (DDR6 is already projected to be more expensive than DDR5).
I also don't understand why exactly the UDIMMS became more expensive, because they are limited to max 256G
artisticMink@reddit
I think what a lot of people missing is that the Consumer PC parts - and that includes the things we need to run local AI - is currently dying. Companies in that space can't survive on 1/10th of their sales for two years. They either die out or get bought out by big suppliers.
When they're gone, they're gone. There's nothing to replace them.
There's some coping going on here that datacenter hardware will eventually trickle down as it gets decommissioned. But that's not gonna happen.
miversen33@reddit
Is it dying? I feel like "personal computers" has been steady for a very long time (note, I say feel. I do not have numbers, I would love for someone to prove that personal computer sales and components are declining).
It seems like rather than dying, these companies have found larger revenue streams and now what was a bigger chunk of their sales (pc components) is only 1/10 of them and they don't care about them. The pie grew, so to speak
xienze@reddit
Honestly, I think it's been declining for quite a while now. Your average person probably doesn't have a desktop computer anymore. Think about it, there's probably next to nothing the average person can't do (not talking about effort level, but just ability) with a smartphone, and roughly "everyone" has one. A smaller but still sizable chunk of people will have a tablet or a laptop. Less and less average people have a desktop as time goes on. To them, what's the point? You've got a smartphone, you've got a laptop, they're both more than good enough, so why tether yourself to one spot?
I'm not saying that current hardware shortages don't kick things into overdrive, but desktop computing has become more and more niche over time. It's just the cycle of technology. Wax and wane. I remember when I was a kid MANY years ago and computers were "affordable" in the sense that a family could own one for "just" $3500 or so of late-80's/early-90's dollars. It was fairly uncommon for a household to have one. But things got cheaper, the use cases for computers increased, and so did uptake. But now we're at a point where desktop computers don't really make sense for most people anymore, for a variety of reasons.
IMO, the future of computing is going to lean more towards phones, tablets, and appliance laptops. Desktop computing will become more and more niche and expensive and really something for the enthusiasts (we're well on that path). Same kind of trajectory as home video.
nanobot_1000@reddit
Desktop PCs are in decline. Last year NVIDIA told me they might not make another generation of GeForce PCIe cards, and so far they haven't - not that I don't think they won't eventually, but they are pretty tapped out. They also said "Moore's Law is really dead" and that they are just increasing power.
What Apple/AMD/NVIDIA are making for consumers is the mini-PCs with unified memory like DGX Spark and Strix Halo. Obviously those have their own limitations, again by design to put an upper limit on what local users can effectively host without relying on the cloud.
specter800@reddit
There's at least one whole generation aging up now that grew up on ipads and other extremely walled-garden devices and another generation is right behind them. Computer literacy is through the floor and the reason for owning any device at all that does more than scroll tiktok and twitter is unfathomable to many, let alone personal builds.
Both_Opportunity5327@reddit
Nonsense, at my kids primary school there are plenty of kids with Desktop PC's. Its usually a split between having a Console or PC fpr the boys.
I have had mums asking me to spec their kids PC's because my son has been boasting about his RTX which I bought for him because he could explain what Ray Tracing was.
HiddenoO@reddit
Most companies that specialise in consumer computer products cannot just shift to datacentres like Nvidia or Micron can. If e.g. you've spent your development time on making good PC cases (think Lian Li or Fractal), practically none of that transfers to datacentres, and even if it did, they'd have to compete against much larger companies with long-term contracts in place.
SV_SV_SV@reddit
"There's some coping going on here that datacenter hardware will eventually trickle down as it gets decommissioned. But that's not gonna happen." How come, what will they do with them?
CalBearFan@reddit
Home users won't be able to run that hardware from what I've read. It's not like.a bunch of 3090s are in data centers. Of course the hacker community (good hacker definition) are very creative so maybe it will. But much like used government construction equipment, it's usually picked up by smaller players. Either way, it won't be as cheap as people are hoping.
DataPhreak@reddit
Running datacenter GPUS isn't much more complex than running a regular home pc. Those cards aren't going to have the game drivers for video games, but there's not really any new concepts there. However, getting them at a decent price will be an issue for a long time even when they do become available.
nanobot_1000@reddit
There's a decent-sized aftermarket of SXMs on ebay along with a growing number of SXM carriers and interposers designed in China. Recently they came out with external dual and quad-SXM boards with cabled 200 Gbps NVLINK and low-profile PCIe adapters for connecting back in to motherboards, rather than the previous triple-width frankenmonster cards that were unfeasible in practice. Where there's a will, there's a way, but in general I share your perspective. If/when A100 80GB modules become available, by that time NVIDIA will probably have deprecated CUDA support and without the likes of FlashAttention/vLLM/SGLang supporting updates for new models, those cards are a brick. And probably already near burn-out from a lifetime running full-tilt in datacenters. So if it's really worth it to you, just get the RTX 6000 Pro 96GB and call it a day. Or use OpenRouter with their zero-data retention providers for a small fraction of the price per token vs frontier models, and if the need comes along you have a path to local deployment.
MajorZesty@reddit
Ignoring the cooling aspects, you're gonna get a server that requires like 4-6 3kw power supplies to run.
Timely-Perception-26@reddit
Why not do what the big fashion chains do and burn unsold clothing?
The cards end up in the trash.
Both_Opportunity5327@reddit
When they are gone, they are gone?
So you are saying Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, NZXT, Corsair & Zotac are going to go bust.
Remember most of these companies also have their own line of Laptops and PC's to tide them over.
That YouTuber is just angry because he has less hardware to review.
MajorZesty@reddit
Asus and Gigabyte will be fine. Corsair will probably be fine. MSI is iffy. NZXT and Zotac are probably dead within the year. I think the 2 years until the pricing on ram chips drop is optimistic and the fall out from the Iran war will ripple through the economy for years.
artisticMink@reddit
There's an interview with the Corsair CEO in there.
And yes, currently, this is what happens because the market has just plummited as prices soar. These companies can sell their inventory for backlog prices and face the cost when ordering new products. Or sell for order prices but tank in terms of sales. They cannot grow. They can only shrink.
relmny@reddit
How do you know is "dying" and not a big slump because prices reached insane levels because of the waffers crap, since last year?
Logical_Look8541@reddit
Its not just the companies actually making the products, its everyone in the chain. Even if it recovers there are going to be less importers, less retailers in the IT space across the world which inevitably will mean costs to the consumer will be higher. People keep focusing on the peripheral and none Memory/ GPU manufacturers but this situation is going to destroy the whole PC supply chain except for the big behemoths (e.g. Dell, HP).
Both_Opportunity5327@reddit
I see it differently, The Cap Ex spending by Big Tech is not sustainable long term. Sooner or later it will tail off and we will have an over supply in the market.
This is going to be advantageous to us because we will have much better Tech from all of The R&D spend, with more companies to choose from.
In no way will we be forced to rent to participate, that view is silly.
Put it another way when ChatGPT was released I would have said you were lying if under 3 Years I could run a similar strength LLM on hardware I already own, that I could make image and videos.
Timely-Perception-26@reddit
The only reason not to rip you off today is to get you hooked so we can rip you off tomorrow.
It's 2026, and we're practically living in the golden age of capitalism all over again, and yet some people are still rooting for corporations. lol
nanobot_1000@reddit
Antitrust 😂
There are no functioning monopoly protections by design, to prop up the "economy" under the auspices "national security"
Welcome to late-stage capitalism. Corporations are people too - important people.
Monkey_1505@reddit
Nature abhors a vacuum.
RobotRobotWhatDoUSee@reddit
I can run much better models now, locally, than I could two years ago, for the same price. Both the hardware and software have improved dramatically.
Two years ago building a rig that could run Llama 3.3 70B, was expensive and loud and you had to build it yourself -- and just forget running llama 3.1 405B.
Now I can run models much, much better than both of those on an off-the-shelf strix halo or Mac.
Pie_Dealer_co@reddit
Thing is It feels like the AI thing is going this way:
Make everyone use AI for cheap in such a way that if you dont you are behind everyone your boss see it, you have less time etc. So just add that AI in your workflow its just 20$ whats that a ticket to the cinema...
Then its already going oh you hit the quote you have to wait we reduced the limits but if you need it that bad here is the 200$ plan. It does what your 20$ plan did with some bells and whistles. And our new frontier model is 500$ it will make you best on the team get you the promotion or open that start up for you.
In essence it will be a race to compute.
What breaks the whole flow is your local personal compute. With how fast local models develop its not a bad hedge.
shokuninstudio@reddit
Ah yes, China the country that famously has no Big Tech companies, no billionaires, no oligarchs, no massive datacenters and no massive generative models that require API.
GirthusThiccus@reddit
I'll watch the video after work, but here's my two Coffee-Break cents: this feels like another step towards total surveillance.
DOGE aggregated formerly separated agencies databases, laying the foundation for the current global surveillance and Palantir push. Making all compute cloud-based whilst loosening laws around privacy, criminalizing VPN use and mandating ID verification are the next steps up to complete and total surveillance and control of the narrative.
They're 100% in on the dystopia timeline.
GerchSimml@reddit
If wonder if we, the users, unknowingly get fed some drivers that'll eventually brick our hardware at someday in the future to force us to cloud-based computing (maybe by a dead-mans-switch to also get OTG users).
GirthusThiccus@reddit
Possibly. Ryzen and Intel CPUs of late already have had massive issues with microcode flaws leading to slightly overvolted and long-term fried chips, and windows keeps pushing broken updates that are bound to brick some PCs at some point.
GerchSimml@reddit
Really curious where all this leads, maybe we're wrong. But we'll know more in a few years.
GirthusThiccus@reddit
I hope we're wrong, genuinely.
GerchSimml@reddit
Same
jd52wtf@reddit
This is why open weight LLM models are so important. Also the people working to adapt the data center grade processing units to regular PCs.
They will continue to keep the prices high to push everyone into the cloud. MS has no problem overbuilding AI infra because they can just transition it to hosting cloud machines when their AI efforts fail.
Nvidia has flat out said this is their plan. The reality is that most computers sit idle for a good chink of time.
They want to capatilize on all that down compute.
nanobot_1000@reddit
They are intrenched incredibly deep at this point. Cloud AI is currently the cornerstone of the US "economy", they will do anything to protect it under the guise of national security - especially after marrying themselves to the oil & gas industry for ramping energy production to power all the new datacenters and the military/surveillance state for a consistent baseline of taxpayer-subsidized workloads.
Kahvana@reddit
I'll just copy-paste my comment from another subreddit here:
Building/buying a desktop PC is rare. Thing is, for the average person, a smartphone and/or laptop is already enough. Need to do most things in life? A phone or tablet can do it. Want to game? Laptops and consoles can do it. Need professional work? A laptop or soldered mini pc can do it. A desktop pc makes sense when you're in the high-end or a DIY type of person, both of which is rare, and the latter can also be fulfilled by thriftshop / second hand components.
Of course it's really sad to see that the "middle" section fades, it's understandable though from the supply-demand issue on the pc component manufacturer's end.
I really don't buy into the whole "You'll own nothing" doom and gloom (if there is demand for ownership, there will be supply), CXMT saving the RAM supply (China needs it for their ascend accelerators), AI bubble (the technology is here to stay) or the "bubble" bursting solving all our issues (the datacenter components are very different from costumer products like SOCAMM memory, SXM GPUs).
NFTArtist@reddit
I disagree saying a laptop / mini PC is all you need for professional work lol.
MrHaxx1@reddit
Wtf do you think professional work means?
I'm in a company of 5000 employees, many of which are software developers. Literally all of them use laptops. Some need more powerful laptops. Some will remote to more powerful servers. But not a single person here needs a desktop computer.
NFTArtist@reddit
Design, Video editing, 3D art, Architecture, Game dev, etc. I'm currently forced to use a work MacBook for design and video stuff but it sucks ass big time. I do all of the above outside of work on my workstation and find it super necessary to be efficient.
Technically I could do a lot of work using some mobile apps but just because you can use a shovel that doesn't mean a digger isn't better for the job.
teachersecret@reddit
All of that ends up being done by AI though. Design is happening now, video editing is starting to happen now, 3d art is happening with text to 3d object, architecture and game dev? Same deal.
We don’t make the majority of clothing by hand anymore, because machines are wildly better at the task. It’s not that people can’t do it, or that the tools people used to use to do it disappeared or became less useful. A tailor with some talent can still make a stunning garment, it’s just going to take a long, long, unreasonably long time. :)
Nobody is gonna fire up those big workstation required CAD tools when an AI spits out a finished product in less time than it takes you to open your production suite. Whatever digger you have will be outperformed and outpaced by the AI steam shovel. I’ve already seen this in my own field. Once AI is good enough, the traditional tools are effectively dead and unnecessary. A hobby.
NFTArtist@reddit
my response isn't regarding AI just the hardware used to get stuff done. However AI is still farrrr from being able to handle any of my design work, it misses basic stuff in brand guideline, doesn't understand formatting rules, misreads briefs, etc. Design is probably more complicated than you imagine, it's more than just spitting out a website UI. You can't just throw Disney or Netflix assets into AI and spit out designs and even if you did you better have lawyers ready. My work is encouraging us to use AI and all we're doing is blowing money making fancy spreadsheets / summarising poorly written emails.
I do think one day AI can handle my design tasks and I'm already transitioning into selling handmade artworks. It still has a long way to go.
Evening_Ad6637@reddit
I completely agree with you and don’t understand why you’re getting so many downvotes.
I remember well how, just a year or two ago, people were talking about future things and also were getting downvoted, while in the meantime, their prophecies have come far more than true.
When I see comments like yours getting downvoted, my only explanation is that these downvoters don’t have the entire timeline since 2023 in view, or that they still don’t understand the significance and the consequences. And I mean the consequences we are already experiencing and living through, right now. I am not talking about probable future consequences, but about realities that are already taking place here and now.
We are currently experiencing and witnessing an absolutely strange and new era in human history. I don’t know how clearly it still needs to be presented to people for them to finally understand it.
NancyPelosisRedCoat@reddit
That’s haute couture. They still use sewing machines and all, but all the high fashion garments that can go for thousands of dollars are worth that much not only because of their brands but there are expert craftsmen working on them manually. (beaides some stuff being still hand stitched) And that’s is art, compared to mass produced clothes that are automated like you described (except for the design part).
krste1point0@reddit
Wtf are you even talking about.
Clothes are made by manual laborers using sewing machines. The design/CAD portion of clothes is also done by people.
Everything seems to be happening but only inside your head.
imonlysmarterthanyou@reddit
Every level of this is incorrect.
Your example of clothing is on point with the rest of your points. We outsource clothing to nations with lax labor laws because there is so much work that needs to be done by hand. They cannot even fold jeans without a human in the loop.
For the rest of your points, while may eventually be technically able to do these things it will be unlikely they will replace a human.
In short, it is about risk. If we bypass the professional and just let Claude take care of it then your company has exposure without the ability to actually know what the exposure is. In these cases we would normally negotiated a hold harmless clause or force the risk to be taken by the AI company. But Anthropic is not going to accept this risk, and no client will accept a hold harmless when talking about anything that impacts human life or could force them to close their doors.
I think seeing the big tech companies use LLMs to generate huge amounts of code looks really impressive, but I doubt any manufactures of medical devices have started letting Claude write the code that controls if people live or die.
4444444vr@reddit
Yea, 128gb is far past most professional needs
Hypilein@reddit
There are loads of jobs that need even less. Most really just use office and other light software.
4444444vr@reddit
Yea, I think most professionals can survive on MacBook airs
imonlysmarterthanyou@reddit
At one point having more than 2MB was beyond most professional needs. Baseline windows 11 needs 16GB.
sQuds@reddit
Remoting to more powerful servers is exactly what this is about…
roverowl@reddit
Software dev is not the only professional job in the world. Expand your world view to many freelancers in other job scenes.
BobsView@reddit
wow you don't say! no way! such an amazing comment
bad8everything@reddit
CAD/CAM
_murb@reddit
Professional doesn’t mean technical. Excel/Word/Powerpoint, browser, and comms is what the vast majority of professional work requires. Obviously engineering, architecture, developer, and other roles require specialized software that have higher requirements or offload to other hardware
ungoogleable@reddit
Software development is often a remote dev VM and a build farm for compute heavy stuff. A similar model could work for other professional software but my impression is there aren't enough users to invest in that kind of infrastructure.
dobkeratops@reddit
as computers advance, new use cases emerge, the appetite for more computing power under individual control should continue to grow.
at some point in the future AI will be raising people's kids and more. People should be running that on their own local hardware instead of on some remote subscription service
sob727@reddit
Agree. Some of us actually run heavy software our workstations.
ElephantWithBlueEyes@reddit
Unless you need threadripper level of performance, gaming laptops or miniPC make PC caskets obsolete (or necessary, to be exactly). You still can get 128 gigs of RAM and ryzen 9955hx is on par with desktop one. The only thing laptops still lack is GPU power
sob727@reddit
Funny you should say that.
AlwaysLateToThaParty@reddit
Doesn't fit my rtx 6000 pro.
Kahvana@reddit
In that section I specifically mention that I'm talking about the average person. A professional that needs serious compute for their work are rare.
Madgyver@reddit
Some professionals work in HR.
So-many-ducks@reddit
I think they (somewhat accurately) assume that the vast majority of professional work doesn’t rely on heavy computing but rather on some kind of digital interface to do data entry (marketing people, projects managers, many programmers, designers, sales people, insurance, healthcare and so on). In comparison, the people who do need proper workstations (3D/AI/advanced design/ simulation and so on) are rare.
311voltures@reddit
Trust me when I say this forum and you being part of it is very niche in the tech space let alone the world
rebelSun25@reddit
Wow. It's your opinion so I won't down vote you, but I disagree. The only all in one , no getting your hands dirty machines that can do most are the M chip apple and they're atrocious for gaming.
It's actually better for users and industry to have niche hardware instead of a one fits all design, because it rewards innovation and allows mahor reuse. Once an all in one machine becomes unstable, it's a huge pain to throw it all away
Suitable-Economy-346@reddit
They're literally talking about how the demand in some cases has dropped 90% in a few months.
Like what the fuck are you even talking about?
Jesus fucking Christ. You neckbeards just can't help yourself thinking you're so smart by missing the entire point of the fucking conversation. Holy fuck.
markole@reddit
Indeed. Housing situation showed that this is true. People just don't want to own anything, they love renting.
Responsible_Buy_7999@reddit
Exhausting is an appropriate word for GN. He does go on. He wishes nothing but harm to the AI industry, and if he has private thoughts otherwise it’s not apparent.
However, dooming is not wrong for a channel whose bread and butter is gaming. As a gamer and a pc builder there is nothing to like or look forward to today. Nvidia has doubled its new product timeline and buried gaming hardware into a “other” category in their financial reporting. The cost of a decent workstation has more than doubled and nobody except shareholders should be happy.
If you’re interested in the hardware side of home lab, level1 is a good choice. Local-first inference is his bias. Work with the hardware in order to… work with the software
BobsView@reddit
he is very dramatic about literally everything because it gives him clicks
in the last few years he went from good information youtuber to 40 min ranting about pc got damaged in shipping
ZenMasterful@reddit
"I really don't buy into the whole "You'll own nothing" doom and gloom (if there is demand for ownership, there will be supply)"
Software ownership vs "license to use", anyone?
apeapebanana@reddit
There will come a day you will lost your access or even denied a product you brought.
Not to jinx, but its the truth. Do it enough time and the other party will do it to you cause they can with enshittification
heck, look at what shrinkflation does to Toblerone
shaolinmaru@reddit
I refuse.
Also, is not like there will be second hand components forever. And the prices will be completely insane.
dobkeratops@reddit
Take nothing for granted, there is a strong push to centralise with AI, some would like all intellectual pursuits and entertainment to happen via the cloud. this must be resisted, you need a full strength PC to handle AI locally.
ttlequals0@reddit
Local models will probably be the long-term end state. Open models are quickly catching up to frontier models. The big hang-up is local computing power.
slippery@reddit
I don't see how local models will ever compete with frontier models running in giant data centers. Unless there is some breakthrough that shrinks model sizes by multiple orders of magnitude, the hardware will be too expensive, not counting electricity and cooling.
nanobot_1000@reddit
Qwen 3.5/3.6 27B and Q3CN exceed my needs, I'm good bro ✌️
Grisward@reddit
Also Moore’s Law. Still going strong.
LLMs might effectively have added an order of magnitude in “compute capability”. Also “compute need”.
Reminds me when Doom and Quake were being developed, ushering in the first 3dfx graphics cards. Analogous to LLMs driving order of magnitude advances.
slippery@reddit
That's an astute observation. Tech tends to hyper focus in one direction. Used to be cpus, then gpus, then phones, now back to gpus and TPUs.
ttlequals0@reddit
The big data centers primarily serve training and inference-as-a-service for millions of users. For personal use, you are just doing inference. You need the pre-trained model and enough RAM/VRAM to load it. This is mostly already possible, but hardware costs are super inflated due to demand; once that comes down, the barrier to entry is minimal.
Ps3Dave@reddit
I think it's a matter of being "good enough". It's the same principle for things like Jellyfin and your own media vs. Netflix, using Linux with Steam & Proton for gaming in place of Windows, etc.
TripleSecretSquirrel@reddit
As a user and evangelist for both local LLMs and Linux, I disagree. Linux is “good enough” (better imo) and jellyfin is “good enough.” Both are a tiny fraction of the market share though because convenience is king for 99% of consumers.
I have pretty technically literate friends whom I’ve been trying to win over to Linux for years but still stick to windows cause it’s familiar and installing an OS is scary to them.
GerchSimml@reddit
I am confident that a breakthrough of some sort will come, making GPU prices of today seem absurd.
-Ellary-@reddit
With MoE models like Gemma 4 26b a4b people can do a lot of tasks using CPU only machine at fine speed of 12-20 tps. What tasks? Same tasks we done using GPT4, and stuff we do in 2024\~ before agentic coding boom.
TinyFluffyRabbit@reddit
Smaller models are getting better too. I think it’s quite remarkable than I’m able to run on my consumer hardware models that would have been SOTA 1-2 years ago.
Monkey_1505@reddit
Logical competence does not really require much size. Knowledge does, but we have web search. And that's based on the current tech, which HAS to be inefficient give how little loss is produced with distillation and pruning.
johnybgoat@reddit
I think the key will be "good enough". If you think about it current AI is already "good enough" as a tool for stuff like PDF summaries, write an email, make me a small program doing X, subsequent models really only updates to keep it up to date on things. Yes there's definitely improvements that still can be done but unless you're a coder, AI has reached the "good enough" point for the time being. You don't NEED frontier models for majority of tasks
Formal-Exam-8767@reddit
And they would love to pass on electricity bill to the customer.
nanobot_1000@reddit
Recent video of BlackRock CEO presenting at a confererence that it's "mandatory" for ordinary people (taxpayers) to fund datacenter cap-ex and electrical grid updates:
https://x.com/shadowofezra/status/2058718603633918343
Mickenfox@reddit
That channel has devolved into dangerous slopulism.
soniko_@reddit
Thing is, most of their followers are too dumb to notice, and engage in their behaviour.
Just go look at the bazzite sub, it’s microslop this and microslop that.
scronide@reddit
I just can’t be arsed with Gamers Nexus these days any more than I can with Linus Tech Tips or even Technology Connections.
Steve realized along the way that angry rants are what gets him attention, because he’s good at it, and that has become the central focus of all his content.
It’s so boring.
Zandarkoad@reddit
Not to mention he's completely thrown off any semblance of journalistic integrity. Too bad, he could have been effective with a bit of humility.
starkruzr@reddit
skill issue, Steve-o
MajorZesty@reddit
The Iran war will probably screw us before the RAM shortages do, but it mirrors what I've seen. The only companies that make money from this are the ones manufacturing the parts. Too expensive now to get any real margins for companies that integrate the pieces together.
Also, I haven't seen anyone fired because AI replaced their job where it wasn't marketing hype. Seen a ton of jobs lost because they needed to free up the budget to pay for AI.
JackStrawWitchita@reddit
Who the hell watches a three and half hour Youtube video?
i_am__not_a_robot@reddit
Those whose attention span hasn't yet been fried by endless social media scrolling.
notheresnolight@reddit
the video has the same duration as the extended cut of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
let that sink in
crantob@reddit
Youtube information density is very low.
rouxchauve92@reddit
That's a bit over the edge. People (may) have lives you know, a iob, childrens, etc. Reddit is my only "social media" and use it mainly only when i take a shit, and I barely have time to listen to a movie I'm interested to in a week..... So let alone a random 3.5 hours video on reddit
NFTArtist@reddit
If you don't have hours of time to educate yourself or learn that's a problem you created for yourself. I bet you do have time though.
mystery_biscotti@reddit
I'd argue this isn't "education". It's a video crafted for revenue.
JustJit_@reddit
Genuinely asking, do you find yourself unable to watch any movies then? This is 2 normal length movies together. It's not that crazy to imagine people are able to watch this over the course of a few days if it's something that interests them.
Kombatsaurus@reddit
I'd be more concerned about interacting with somebody who has the time to watch a 3 hour Youtube video instead of virtually anything else productive with their life.
shaolinmaru@reddit
You know you don't have to watch it all of once, do you?
philmarcracken@reddit
its MY sleepover and I get to decide the movie!
SneakyRum@reddit
I watched it. Skipped a fair chunk of it. Almost exclusively talking to manufacturers of PC cases.
Kahvana@reddit
I did, it's genuinely interesting and you can just listen to it in the background while you work,
aprx4@reddit
i'm not buying into AI dooming opinion. Gamer nexus' primary audience is PC gamer and they are obviously mad about market pricing. The cost of Apple II 'personal computer' would be $7000+ in 2026 dollar.
DIY market has been always tiny segment of client computing, which is in turn small compared to enterprise/datacenter. Most innovations in computing were driven by enterprise. First multi-core CPU was not made for gaming, 64-bit architecture were not made for gaming.
I have PC for occasional gaming, but i'm optimistic. AI is a use case that pushes the limit of existing technologies at multiple directions. Demand and desire to overcome the technical bottlenecks will benefit computing in long term.
crantob@reddit
Good point. Depending on whose inflation numbers you believe.... a 48k Apple II with dual floppies, greenscreen monitor and printer would run around $15k now.
LumenAstralis@reddit
Influencers are never "normal people". Every time one of them tries to present themselves as a voice for us "normal people", a spot in hell opens up and a puppy dies.
AvidCyclist250@reddit
I feel spoken for by him. He's an activist. Like Louis Rossmann. I like activism.
crantob@reddit
I discriminate between helpful and harmful activism.
rebelSun25@reddit
He's actually interviewing people in the industry who are showing the exact facts... WTF are you in about influencers
Irythros@reddit
Sounds like you're trying to influence me. Hope you enjoy hell and why did you kill a puppy.
ParaboloidalCrest@reddit
I'd generally agree, but he's sharing normal people concerns, no?
WithoutReason1729@reddit
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frogsarenottoads@reddit
I disagree, eventually a lot of this will be locally, and people will sell chips/hardware or other competitors will.
relmny@reddit
I watched the first 10 mins or so and stopped because I got the impression that the claims were:
- ai companies brought prices up, so they blame all of them (wasn't only openai with the 40% waffers move?)
- ppl are not buying new computers/parts (of course! because of prices!)
- not owning computers but "renting" (that was attempted many years ago and didn't work)
I stopped because in those minutes I didn't find anything interesting/relevant, and was actually expecting to mention local models... maybe they did later, but lost interest.
HettySwollocks@reddit
This is precisely why I've brought everything onprem. We knew this was going to happen
Silver_Jaguar_24@reddit
My employer are learning the hard way right now. I knew precisely this was going to happen when they were announcing everything was moving to cloud just 2 or 3 years ago and I was like: face palm moment.
sdziscool@reddit
would have done the same if I was a millionaire lol
UnethicalExperiments@reddit
Same here , I've been setting up my business with everything hosted myself. It's infuriating to try getting any form of help when the answer is always " pay for x cloud service"
Cloud services are expensive as hell and at the end of the day I still don't own my hardware and still have to keep paying perpetually. Not to mention I don't want to fork my data over to a foreign entity.
Oh and I hate advertising and lack of privacy. I mean I really really hate it
HettySwollocks@reddit
Sounds like you and I have a similar thought pattern. I cannot stand rent seeking. I received a very large bill from Flyl.io recently, cancelled that account immediately and moved it to the homelab instead.
Stock_Ad9641@reddit
He’s right but also wrong. NVIDIA and their invested partners obviously collaborate to make PCs and especially GPUs unaffordable to consumers. Their idea is that the market manipulation brings the world into their cloud and binds them there.
But that’s a short sighted fallacy, China and others will start competing, tens of millions of older GPUs inevitably will come back out of datacenters every year. They want to see the world enslaved by their service but what is going to happen is the precise opposite.
kaisurniwurer@reddit
Could easily be shredded or utilised as e-waste by subsidiaries.
-Ellary-@reddit
Thing is that all of them should shred and utilize old server equipment even before.
But somehow it lost in the process, or "marked" as utilized, cargo lost etc.
Stock_Ad9641@reddit
No, what happens is that the monopolistic partners of NVIDIA sell their hardware at 2 times the purchase price once they exchange. That hardware then moves through smaller datacenters and once they sell it you’ll start seeing the first ones on the market.
So Amazon, Azure etc make a huge profit on their original purchase, they won’t shred it
artisticMink@reddit
It's coping on your part. China will save us is a great narrative - but why should any chinese company eventually not do the same thing. When renting is already accepted and they can rent it to your for an upsell?
You're counting on companies, in the long run, just playing fair and square with your best interest in mind.
But why should they?
robinei@reddit
It will always be profitable to go against the "cartel". As long as we have proper free market conditions, the DIY market will be serviced as long as it exists. Bumps in the road not withstanding.
artisticMink@reddit
The proper free market conditions that allow, for example Meta, to basically ignore taxes by and circumvent FTC oversight by donating to a certain ballroom?
lolwutdo@reddit
Tired of seeing this mf who doesn't know what a hair brush is
JackStrawWitchita@reddit
Here's a summary for those not interested in watching a 3+ hour video:
The Collapse of Personal Computing and the End of Ownership
This investigation explores the significant decline of the personal computing (PC) industry and the erosion of consumer ownership, driven by the insatiable demand for AI compute power and the strategic shift by major tech companies towards cloud-based services.
Key Points:
Industry Collapse: The consumer personal computer industry is experiencing a severe downturn, with sales reportedly down over 70% year-over-year. This is leading to significant revenue declines for companies across the PC hardware ecosystem.
AI's Dominance: The primary driver behind this collapse is the massive and ever-increasing demand for AI compute power, fueling the growth of data centers. This demand is consuming resources and driving up prices for essential components like memory and storage, which have seen price increases of 5-9 times.
Shift from Ownership to Rentership: Major AI companies, including NVIDIA, are explicitly stating a move away from "personal computers" towards "personal AI" and cloud-based compute options. This signals a strategic intent to convert PC ownership into a subscription or rental model, akin to a "rent-ership" system.
Component Scarcity and Price Hikes: The intense demand for AI compute has led to widespread scarcity of components like GPUs and memory. Companies that previously focused on consumer-first PC hardware now have little control over component prices or availability, severely impacting their sales volumes and profitability.
Impact on PC Component Manufacturers: Companies like Thermal Grizzly, Cooler Master, G.Skill, Hyte, Corsair, and Be Quiet are all reporting significant sales declines and struggling to adapt. Some are seeing revenue drop by as much as 40% year-over-year.
External Factors: Beyond AI, factors like tariffs, increased freight costs, rising oil prices, and the general increase in the cost of living are also contributing to the industry's challenges and making PC ownership less accessible.
The Future of Computing: The trend suggests a future where individuals may rely on handheld devices acting as terminals for cloud-based AI services, rather than owning powerful, independent personal computers. This represents a fundamental shift away from the PC paradigm that has defined computing for decades.
The investigation highlights that the "mask is off" for mega-corporations, as they leverage rising prices and infrastructure build-ups to offer computing as a service, effectively pricing ownership out of possibility for many consumers.
Eat-Playdoh@reddit
did you just use the YouTube Ask AI feature then copy paste the response as a Reddit comment? 🤡
JackStrawWitchita@reddit
No, I used a YouTube video summary service.
Eat-Playdoh@reddit
The one natively built into YouTube?
JackStrawWitchita@reddit
No. I use Freetube, not the YT website. Better for adblocking etc
rebelSun25@reddit
It's a useful feature. This is exactly the type of video we want transcribed and summarized, indexed for future search.
mintybadgerme@reddit
So what? It was actually useful.
Eat-Playdoh@reddit
I mean, it doesn't make sense to me since anyone can hit the summarize button themselves. idk mannnnnnnnn 🤷
mintybadgerme@reddit
Yeah, I get it. But then again a lot of people probably don't even bother trying to access a 3 hour video. I didn't. I just watched a bit on speed run. And I don't go to YouTube either, I use Reddit small viewer.
Eat-Playdoh@reddit
Yeah, it's just like... AI is already making things convenient as fuck for people and you still gotta spoon feed em the extra two clicks because they can't be bothered to bring the prefilled spoon to their mouths. Like damn.
PeaceLoveorKnife@reddit
I saw it on his channel. Amazing work.
Key point I'd have liked to emphasize more is that AI is not the cause of the problem. It's a nail in the coffin of enthusiast / hobby PC hardware. It's been dying for 10 years.
Its one in a long series of problems as wealth disparities continue increasing. We're even seeing this in flights where private planes are being used more but economy and first class seats on planes are shrinking.
rebelSun25@reddit
They're pushing cloud office, cloud storage, cloud gaming and now cloud computing...
Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me ... you can't get fooled again.
Thebandroid@reddit
the issue with owning nothing isn't the lack of ownership, its about trusting those who do end up owning it...and I don't trust them at all.
MoneyPowerNexis@reddit
I want to like Gamers Nexus but he is really exhausting. I just cant sustain getting riled up over changing consumer preferences.
whatever462672@reddit
Yes, after an unnecessary war has wiped out 30% of the world's Helium, distributed compute might just become very expensive again. The tech sector works on a cycle, and we are in 2017 once more.
yoshiK@reddit
Video editing pro tip, if your 3h video starts with the idea that Nvidia doesn't like money then I'm not going to bother watching the other 2:59:00 of your video.
Idiopathic_Sapien@reddit
Unified memory is the future for pc gaming and local ai.
stoppableDissolution@reddit
Nah, its a dead end that is only good for low-power portable stuff
DataGOGO@reddit
only if it gets a LOT faster and is upgradable.
AppealSame4367@reddit
I'm glad Radagast is going with the times.
Sixstringsickness@reddit
The market will eventually correct, when is the question.
Eventually significant improvements in LLM efficiency will be achieved. I also believe the number of people dabbling in AI will significantly drop off. The ability of the average individual to maintain their own agents over time is a greater barrier than most realize. It is fun and engaging at first, as time goes on it does become a "job" to continually fix problems as they arise and most people will likely determine thst ROI isn't worth the time investment.
My job revolves around AI, and while I find great value in hosting my own graph rag MCP server which is all run via local LLMs from embedding to communities and retrievial, I have zero desire to dive into open claw or hermes. I have not found a value proposition at this time, the security nightmares not withstanding.
I could be mistaken, however, I am already seeing signs that AI investment will begin to taper off.
One aspect of this that needs to be considered is from a historical perspective, personal computing has been incredibly affordable in the last few decades. In the 80/90s home computers were relatively much more expensive - and honestly barring GPUs they are still very affordable relative to inflation. Much like many other goods, our wages have not risen relative to the cost of goods in the US, and this does have an impact on technology.
fkrkz@reddit
The young ones can not find jobs these days so they can't afford expensive hobbies
M_Me_Meteo@reddit
Man, someone needs to tell Steve that a lot of other journalist have already covered this and did a much better job.
Hot takes on games and gamers is lots of fun and there's tons of room to be involved. Satire and dark humor are welcome.
The same spicy approach to "journalism" is actually counter productive. This guy fills the discourse with sophomoric garbage that is either pumped-up fear mongering or so old and over reported that even the interviews feel like a waste of my time.
Steve has (had?) access to the people who were in charge of his hobby and instead of using that access to do anything of value, he whines about what's fair and whose got the most integrity.
Last time I checked, YouTube is about subscribers, not integrity.