What if a unicorn gave me the first ethical local model, now all my sins are absolved

And what if tech oligarchs weren’t evil and used this new technology to make lives better instead of concentrating capital? We don’t have that either so there’s no use speculating.

Snark aside, I think you’re underestimating just how much data it takes to make these models work. There is no such thing as enough “private” data for training.

Then they still used just as many resources? All these local models are distillations of the big models.