Q: I don’t really understand how I can have AI running on my phone or tablet without any impact on battery life but keep reading how companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google need zillion watt power plants and half the Earth’s water to run their AI systems. What’s the explanation?

A: There’s a lot of confusion about this dichotomy of power needs in the world of generative artificial intelligence! It’s more nuanced too, because sometimes what you think is running locally on your device is still sneaking online for processing oomph.

One way to tell is to see what AI features work when you’re in airplane mode. You might be surprised what fails!

It’s really a difference of power and capabilities. Online AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok have massive data and processing available,

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