If there was an AI model that ran locally on a PC for basic things and cloud sourced computer power for more complex tasks, all of these data centers would become obsolete in an instant. All of the invested capital and materials wasted in a flash.
Edit: lots of great counter points in the comments.
People could have dedicated AI servers that they can access with their entertainment PC.
This is of course very hypothetical.
If people in general can’t be arsed self hosting media streamers, email and social media then thinking they are gonna start running novel AI datacentres in their cupboard seems somewhat optimistic.
Even if something like a GDX Sparx could be gotten cheaply you still need to pay the electric bill to run it and be a system administrator so likely just ends up costing a load to buy and run and you still have to pay for datacentre access for large models.
There’s also a bit of an issue with hardware at the moment which is why I’m pursuing your vision on a n100 minipc.
I use Jan on my workstation which is in the kinda area, it comes with a little local model and you can plugin your own models and cloud api’s.
It’s a matter of degrees, one in a million consumers might be enough of an “enthusiast” to spend the money to setup a personal server. Even if I had the money ($100K) for a “powerful enough” server, the market is changing so fast it’s definitely rent-not-buy territory for anybody with any sense.