The Data Center Moves to Your Machine
perplexity.ai
perplexity.ai
On the one hand, I suppose modern personal computers often have a lot of excess compute, so for lightweight inference tasks it makes sense to utilize it.
On the other hand, it will always be true that datacenters can optimize for shared infra (i.e. when I'm asleep, someone in a different timezone can use my capacity), lower cost power (they can build near cheap power sources, which is not how I choose where I live), and upgrade cycles (they can upgrade hardware when it makes sense for production models, not when I choose to upgrade my laptop because I dropped the old one or I want a bigger screen).
That suggests to me that there is far more pressure to keep things in a datacenter than to move it to local computers.
As for privacy, yes, that part is nice--but remote sealed computing (a la Confer.to) is another option for this which preserves the economic advantage of the cloud.
I believe that common tasks, the ones that have meaning in everyday life, will move to personal devices, leaving the big jobs to big outfits who either deploy them internally (who doesn't love an arms race?) including governments, which do engage in arms races and mass surveillance.
And additionally, give away "AI swag" like Jeffrey Epstein allegedly gave candy to little girls [0][1]
"Free when you buy our phones/tablets/computers/glasses" and "Better than the other guy" [2]
Surely, You can't be Siri-us.
[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/epstein-birthday-book-draw...
[1] Jeffrey Epstein could not be reached for comment.