Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, which is backed by Jeff Bezos and Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA), issued a contrarian warning about the future of artificial intelligence, saying on-device intelligence running on personal devices could disrupt the centralized data center model driving massive infrastructure investments.
“The biggest threat to a data center is if the intelligence can be packed locally on a chip that’s running on the device and then there’s no need to inference all of it on like one centralized data center,” Srinivas said in a podcast interview with Prakhar Gupta released last week.
Srinivas, who has previously worked at OpenAI, Google Brain, and DeepMind, said that AI running directly on personal devices could reduce the need for centralized data centers.
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“That really disrupts the whole data center industry like it doesn’t make sense to spend all this money $500 billion, $5 trillion whatever on building all the centralized data centers across the world,” he said, calling it a “$10 trillion question, hundred trillion dollar question.”
He also highlighted scenarios where AI running locally could learn from repeated tasks on individual devices, adapting over time and automating user activities.
“It adapts to you and over time starts automating a lot of the things you do. That way you don’t have to repeat it. That’s your intelligence. You own it. It’s your brain,” Srinivas said.
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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has “a massive advantage” due to its M1 chips and power-efficient devices, according to Srinivas. Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) and original equipment manufacturers, including Apple, Samsung (OTC:SSNLF), Lenovo (OTC:LNVGF), and HP Inc. (NYSE:HPQ) could also benefit from distributing AI-enabled devices.
However, technical barriers remain. Srinivas noted that no AI model has yet been released that can run efficiently on a local chip while completing tasks reliably.
The Indian-born entrepreneur expects early adoption on MacBooks or iPads before reaching smartphones.
He also discussed the potential for AI in the physical world, especially in robotics. Srinivas said AI could transform the labor market by automating many tasks now done by humans, echoing concerns raised by Geoffrey Hinton who is often called the ‘Godfather of AI’.
