Local AI vs cloud AI, and should we even be comparing?

There’s a big debate about whether local AI is better than cloud AI. I don’t think it should be a debate at all. They both have their pros and cons, and once you see that clearly, the “which is better” question stops making much sense.

If you take one thing from this: it isn’t local against cloud. It’s knowing which one the job in front of you actually needs.

What each one is good at

Local AI gives you privacy, sovereignty, autonomy, and the ability to experiment with your own personal data. It’s yours, on your machine, offline.

Cloud AI gives you massive compute and the huge knowledge of the frontier models - the biggest, most capable ones out there.

Once you can see the pros that plainly, the cons of each are easy enough to work out for yourself.

How I actually shuffle them

I use local AI for my own projects, my experimenting, my research. When I need deeper thinking, or a complex breakdown of something, I reach for cloud AI. But never for anything with sensitive data. That’s the line I try to avoid.

That’s how I shuffle the two. Both are of benefit. Neither one wins.

Why the comparison misses the point

We’re starting to get very powerful open source models now, even the new trillion-parameter ones. But the truth is, not many individuals can actually run a model that massive at home. So people line the models up against each other and argue, and I don’t think there should be a comparison at all.

Because this site isn’t about that fight. It’s for the individual being able to run AI on their own machine, or even their phone. It doesn’t need to be grand. You don’t need a giant model to go head to head with anyone.

Being able to run local AI, no matter how small the model is, is the whole point. That’s the core purpose of this site: as many individuals as possible running AI on their own hardware.

So that’s my take on local versus cloud. Don’t pick a side. Keep both, know which job needs which, and just trying to keep the sensitive things(relationship, health, spirituality etc) at home.