Local AI needs to be the norm
5 hours ago
- #Software Development
- #Privacy
- #Local AI
- Using cloud-hosted AI models for app features creates fragile, privacy-invasive, and broken software.
- Local devices have powerful hardware (like Neural Engines) that remains underutilized, making server-dependent AI unnecessary for many tasks.
- Streaming user data to third-party AI providers introduces data retention issues, compliance burdens, and added complexity (network, uptime, billing).
- Local AI, as demonstrated by Brutalist Report's on-device summaries, offers privacy, speed, and reliability without external dependencies.
- Tooling in the Apple ecosystem enables local AI with structured outputs (typed data like Swift structs), improving engineering and trust.
- Local models excel at data transformation tasks (summarize, classify, extract) and don't need superhuman intelligence for many use cases.
- Prioritize useful software over 'AI everywhere,' using cloud models only when necessary and keeping user data on-device.