I don't want to argue here, but once models are trained, using them is quite cheap. Also in the last few months most improvements I've seen are in the smaller sized models, which might make using models even cheaper.
There's this weird tension where small models are getting a lot better, but the gap between the frontier and "what I can run on my gaming GPU" at home isn't necessarily getting smaller. That said, Qwen-3.8-27B-Q3 runs on my 9700 XT and performs well enough for tool calling in agents, which is a critical floor in local model performance imo.
I don't want to argue here, but once models are trained, using them is quite cheap. Also in the last few months most improvements I've seen are in the smaller sized models, which might make using models even cheaper.
There's this weird tension where small models are getting a lot better, but the gap between the frontier and "what I can run on my gaming GPU" at home isn't necessarily getting smaller. That said, Qwen-3.8-27B-Q3 runs on my 9700 XT and performs well enough for tool calling in agents, which is a critical floor in local model performance imo.
Ed Zitron is going to become the Simpsons of ai critiques...
Siri, what's the spot price for an A100?