>Maybe local AGI isn't so far-fetched.

Why settle for anything less?

Before they had personal computers I always figured the established computer experts were going to get their mainframes to do AI a lot sooner than it turned out.

That was a non-starter though, not many people could afford huge amounts of hardware in a centralized datacenter where you don't have unlimited access. How was the next level of progress supposed to occur if you didn't fully own the electronics?

It was pretty impressive when it required a forklift to move the CPU, but kind of forbidding too.

PCs took over fast for that very reason and rapidly became more powerful until they were quite capable of incredible amounts of automation well over 20 years ago for so many things.

The whole time since the mainframe days the thing that has held true for AI in automation, is that it has to take the same powerful, sophisticated PC hardware that already works so well without AI, and bring that to the next level in logical progression.

No dependency on remote data, remote storage, network or internet at all. Otherwise why bother?

As long as AI can not make the same stand-alone hardware outperform what it's already capable of beforehand, there's quite a bit more work to do.

An idealized automation workflow on a new PC without AI:

Insert blank SSD > Install OS > Install automation app > Program app > Run automaton

Same stand-alone hardware, with AI:

Insert blank SSD > Install OS > Install AI app > Train app > Run automaton

If AI can't make the same hardware run smarter, it's not as intelligent as it could be, is it?

I don't need AGI, I just need this.