I completely agree. I'm not sure where you live, but also live in a country with a lack of doctors. It's a shame we have to wait months and months for therapy. And that's not healthy, neither for the people in need, nor for society in general. And mental health is such a valuable thing.

I think you're right with your assessment towards "open" models. I think that viewpoint has been popularized by the leaked google memo We Have No Moat, And Neither Does OpenAI last year. And unless we want the path forward to be laid out for us by companies like Google and OpenAI, there's no way around independent and "open" models.

And I'd like those AIs to become more accessible, run on (affordable) consumer hardware. Maybe on my phone. Things like real-time translation would be great and I could have a simultaneous interpreter in my pocket. Or an assistant that can organize my files and keep track of everything. I think there is quite some potential and all of that is doable in the near future. And it'd seriously boost my own abilities if I were for example enabled to read Japanese text or Spanish news.

Concerning the AI at home: I use koboldcpp as of now. That enables me to run smaller models on my old computer. I use that for role play, companionship etc. I'm also having difficulties finding the time to build software around that. At some point I'd like to have a virtual companion that's open-source, keeps me company and can do useful things. I would estimate I'd need like 4 weeks of full-time work to build something like that. But I'm already able to program in Python and have a broad understanding of the required components. Maybe one day I'll find some time, but there's so much other stuff that needs attention.