hardware that can run adequate local models

I don't use AI for anything except translating language. I just use the local models. I have no fucking idea how an entire language (and the info needed to properly transform to another language) can be contained in a file of 10-70mb. But it works adequately on my trashy old hardware.

Also tried a bit of text to speech, transcription and similar. Those were more of a pain in the ass and needed a lot more stuff to download and set up but it isn't clear to me if that is the nature of it or maybe the front end user experience just hasn't been polished yet. But my laptop can handle it anyway. It seems like these companies really want the SAAS model and that is directing how they build. More than it being an inherent requirement.

To me it kind of seems like most individual people have a limited set of tasks they want to accomplish so you could just have whatever you need locally. Probably could even generate a custom local model and send it updates from an interface of some kind. If you want something to write emails or whatever you have it pull and digest what it needs once and then by incremental upgrades after that.

Its hard for me to imagine individual users really need so much power from a data center because its not like you are using the whole thing yourself. Probably data centers are really for huge comprehensive tasks that humans could never do unaided like analyzing massive datasets.