If I understand correctly from the article, you have to enter ‘OOBE\BYPASSNRO’ in command prompt during installation to prevent it from asking to connect to internet. If that’s the only way to set up a local account, that’s hardly an accessible option.

Wouldn’t it be possible to buy a new PC, open the box, and return it right after because you cannot set it up without internet?

If enough people do it, may be PC manufacturers will force Microsoft to add offline setups.

The GitHub copilot example seems to indicate it’s a pricing problem. In fact this situation might indicate that users are finding it so useful that they are using it more than MS expected when they set up their monthly subscriptions. Over time, models are going to be optimized and costs will reduce.

Expecting AI to take over all human intensive tasks is not realistic but eventually it’s going to become part of a lot of repetitive tasks. Though I hope that we see more open source base models instead of the current situation with 3-4 major companies providing the base models behind most of the AI applications.