> For the setup price alone of a low-end home lab1, you could buy several years of a paid subscription to one of the AI providers. The power costs would come ou

> For the setup price alone of a low-end home lab1, you could buy several years of a paid subscription to one of the AI providers. The power costs would come out to around $50-$300 per month, depending on how much inference you’re running: again, the price of a couple more paid subscriptions. Okay, but I already have multiple computers capable of running local models with acceptable performance, so for me the cost is $0. I suspect that's true for most people of sufficient technical inclination to be interested in and capable of running models on their local machines. Also, no, the monthly electricity price of even my power-hungriest machines ain't anywhere close to that figure. Hell, at the high end that's more than my power bill for my whole household.