Title says it all. Why spend so much effort finetuning and serving models locally when any closed-source model will do the same for cheaper in the long run. Is it a philosophical argument? (As in freedom vs free beer) Or are there practical cases where a local model does better.
Where I’m coming from is the requirement of a copilot, primarily for code but maybe for automating personal tasks as well, and wondering whether to put down the $20/mo for GPT4 or roll out my own personal assistant and run it locally (have an M2 max, compute wouldn’t be a huge issue)
Control. You can have the control or you can let someone else have the control. Open source LLMs give The masses and other option. An option they don’t have to pay for. Your question is like saying why don’t you use Microsoft 360 instead of open office.