While I love cloud computing, you're comparing the cost of renting a GPU for a fixed amount of time to the purchase of an asset which can be used for years.
Not a useful comparison IMHO.
Disagree, equity of access matters a lot. Not everyone benefits from exposure to the entire hardware lifecycle, the same way that buying housing is not the best financial decision for everyone regardless of affordability. I might have unlimited budget but if I only need access to state of the art hardware intermittently or under irregular circumstances the cost of renting may be efficient for my needs. Also consider the costs of supporting hardware that is fully owned, if you own the hardware but underutilize it that is inefficiency and the owner bears that cost. The unusual way that silicon depreciates mean that the value of your “asset” is not static and rapidly depreciates as silicon manufacturing improves.
