Local AI would thwart this vision (which is why they're desperately also trying to ruin the hardware market at the same time), but the effort it would take to get local models to run as well as these frontier models is an odd thing to pursue just to avoid learning the fundamentals and gaining direct experience.
While I agree Local AI would be a good goal, even the huge open weight models that can't be run locally are already thwarting the US AI lab's duopoly. Other companies can and do serve up these open weight models, and without having to amortize R&D they are able to serve the tokens at a pretty cheap rate.
In some ways, it feel like I'd be "stuck" at my 2024 capabilities if I didn't push myself constantly, and I'm really glad for every hour I spent learning/applying new stuff before that, because now it feels way harder.