Interesting statement. Now with the rise of cloud computing, how big is this a bottleneck? As an example, I happily run deep learning algorithms on Deepnote on. Y local machine (M1 Mac 8gb RAM), but I have never noticed remarkable difference in performance for exactly same processes on my 16gb RAM thinkpad. You probably did not mean it, but use of expressions such as “average Joe” does not need high end computational access can be interpreted as an expression of arrogance as if the “average Joe” is inferior to people like software programmers in some way. These are best avoided.