Yesterday Apple announced a 512 GB configuration of the Mac Studio. It starts at $22,299. I’ve spent a lot of time testing local AI, and I do think it has uses currently, but I also think it has a lot of room to grow. I’d love to do more of this work without handing my data over to the frontier companies. I just don’t think the local models and harnesses are there yet, regardless of how much RAM they have. The models I’ve tried still make too many mistakes and require too much management for the work I want them to do.

I’ve had better luck with simpler jobs, like naming files and other donkey work. However, the models doing those tasks already fit comfortably on my current machine. There are certainly people with specialized workloads who can put a big Mac Studio to good use. For a normal user hoping to buy a reliable local robot assistant, though, I don’t think the value is there yet. Before spending that money, I’d want to see the particular model doing the particular job well.

I’m still excited about where this is going. I expect local models to get better at the everyday work I talk about in the Robot Assistant Field Guide, and I hope to do more of it on affordable computers. Who knows where these models will be in a year or two? Maybe they’ll be really effective, but buying expensive hardware now in that hope is a mistake. Besides, if I’m right and these models are gangbusters in two years, better hardware will be available then for that work. Maybe we’ll be past this strange age of RAMageddon, and they’ll be more affordable too.