Comment by cft
12 hours ago
There have been a lot of write-ups about the future of AI. I see two distinct futures:
1. You get ID'd and biometrically scanned to be able to use powerful AI, and after you get de-platformed by an opaque censorship system, you are a digital bum. Same life as homeless now: they cannot even open a bank account because they don't have an address.
2. Local models win, perhaps with the assistance of Apple, and people run suffiently powerful models on the client computers.
My bet is on 1.
3. LLMs are fully commoditized, your country funds training of SoTA models, your town runs them in the municipal data center; everything tax-funded. You can use them for a modest fee, as easily as taking a train. When interacting with those LLMs, your privacy is guaranteed by law.
How many municipalities offer the services of ISPs? I know it’s not zero, but decades of private ISPs leading the market leads me to believe municipal data centers won’t be made available to residents.
How often would municipal data centers need to upgrade/replace hardware? What impact would that have on local tax levy rates?
Would you choose to relocate your family to the next town over because they have more available RAM?
You might be surprised how many places have public broadband. I think they are usually the result of poor private offers.
Compared to sewers, drinking water, electricity and roads it seems a rather simple and cheap thing to build.
My commercial isp offers all kinds of packages clearly designed to extract as much money as possible. I cant even see the prices as everything is hidden behind x months discount. From what i remember 200 mbit is 42 and 2000 is 60 but a phone line and tv become available only if you take the faster package and required with the fastest speeds.
So its like one banana for $1 and 10 bananas for $1.50 If you buy just one you cant buy milk, if you buy 10 you also have to buy milk.
Its also been sold 6 times. Unsurprisingly, each time the service and quality noticably declines and the prices go up.
I see their adds everywhere and they sponsor all kinds of things. It suggests the product is overpriced and doesnt sell it self.
That could work in less than 5 countries in the world: in your home country Switzerland, Singapore, Denmark and perhaps Norway.