Not-yet-profitable AI companies are constructing a vast and expensive global network of server farms to support cloud-based generative AI (genAI) services. Deeply financed by venture capitalists who will one day want to see return on their investments, these centers are consuming enough memory to drive consumer technology prices higher and higher.
Yet, for all the investment now going on, it’s inevitable that new on-device genAI models will emerge. When they do, the AI tasks for which you use cloud services today will be handled on device tomorrow. And at the speed we’re going, tomorrow is not very far away.
We already know it is possible. Just look at Siri AI. To create it, Apple worked with Google Gemini — using the latter to help build and distill Apple’s own AI models, many of which now work entirely on device.
The hidden cost of the AI buildout
This move toward edge AI takes place as the tech industry pours its eggs into the AI basket, with major memory suppliers redirecting manufacturing capacity toward higher-value memory products for AI servers, such as advanced-layer 3D NAND. They’ve done so while failing to invest in additional capacity, prompting a shortage of the kind of general purpose RAM you use in your computer, console, or smartphone.
