I can't speak to the author's workflow but I also do ML research and I often need heavy bursts of computation with long stretches of nothing in between. So I mi

I can't speak to the author's workflow but I also do ML research and I often need heavy bursts of computation with long stretches of nothing in between. So I might spend a few hundred bucks in a couple of days by using multiple very powerful instances at the same time. Even if the cost ends up being the same as a workstation over a year, when it matters the cloud gives me results faster than a workstation would and this enables fast iteration over ideas.