You specifically picked things like toasters and fridges which seem like frivolous if not entirely useless applications of LLMs.
But you can be more charitable and imagine more productive uses of AI on the edge that are impossible today. Those uses would presumably create some value, so if by reducing AI energy costs by 90% we get all the AI usage we have today plus those new uses that aren't currently viable, it's a better bang for buck.
I actually think that fridges with image recognition would be a value add depending on the price. Could evaluate whether or not your food has spoiled, queue up a list of items to purchase, etc.
Maybe for larger kitchen/restaurants. But for residential use I think it would only serve to further distance the human from nature with all subsequent drawbacks.
But you can be more charitable and imagine more productive uses of AI on the edge that are impossible today. Those uses would presumably create some value, so if by reducing AI energy costs by 90% we get all the AI usage we have today plus those new uses that aren't currently viable, it's a better bang for buck.