If the world ends all I have to do is power my desktop and I'll have my locals - a decent iteration of Deepseek and a few smaller models, some focused, some just older versions - having several is key tho. They can be cross referenced to limit hallucinations and inaccurate information - this means I can confidently say that I have on my desktop - all of human history, knowledge, discoveries, maths, languages - at least in summary or truncated form (also another bonus of multiple models - will often have more comprehensive total output than one model provides) and all of those models have absolutely no restrictions other than the broadest limits allowed by current laws - so, practically no limits (I bet I could get them all it to explain splitting the atom with minor effort).

I realize that my amazing tool/system of local AI is out of date - I still very much like having it and it is not at all a bad thing to hav. Everyone in theory ought to have a local backup - for just in case.

The fact that people will have this in this one, albeit extreme, example - it would most definitely matter in the event of a societal collapse. Not everyone will have it - can they run those giant data centers off a few solar panels like a desktop PC?

For this one existential reason alone, I recommend everyone at least play around local enough to have a few models functional.