Local AI vs. Cloud AI: where should the intelligence live?

Local AI means the model runs on hardware you control — your MacBook, Windows laptop, Android phone, iPhone, a browser, a Raspberry Pi, or a workstation in your office. Cloud AI means the model runs somewhere else and you access it through a website or an API. The real business question is where the intelligence should live. If you're doing deep research, strategy, or hard reasoning and want the strongest possible model, you'll probably use a frontier cloud model. But if the work involves private files, sensitive customer data, offline usage, field work, low latency, audio input, or an internal workflow that runs again and again, local AI starts to make a lot of sense. A smaller model in the right place can actually be very valuable — that's the core idea to keep in your head.