Selfhosted

People are downvoting you, but I like your idea to draw analogy with heating, because it is something most of us rely on, and if LLMs and related technology will keep evolving as they do, probably most of us will rely on it more or less, sooner or later. Regardless of what AI haters would say.

But your wood fire/central heating analogy is bad. I would compare large LLM vendors to hot water heating utility common in Eastern Europe, and small LLMs to various heating devices. Utility companies can set prices, and decide who gets connected to hot water pipe, and set water temperature. There are regulations that limit the power of such utility companies, allow customers to choose the supplier, etc. Same should happen with LLM providers - competition and anti-monopoly laws should protect customers who choose to use them.

Alternatively, customers may choose not to use utility-supplied heating. They can purchase space heaters, hand warmers, install split systems, burn wood - they are free to pick technology, power source, size, appearance of such devices. They can take responsibility of heating their homes, willing to invest their time and money in order to be independent of central heating utility. Small LLMs are like that - people can run their own, with capabilities dependent on investment, or they can pay smaller providers or resellers to get more flexibility and/or privacy and avoid capital investments. They could spend time tuning small models and harnesses to do some simple tasks, and they wouldn't need to "buy intelligence" from OpenAI and others.