Physical vs. Cloud Servers for Building an Intelligent Home AI
The server question nobody asks out loud
When Apple shipped Siri in 2011, the virtual assistant stopped being science fiction. Amazon followed in 2014 with Alexa and the Echo, and it still leads the category. Depending on whose survey you read, somewhere between 60% and 70% of US smart speaker owners have an Echo (Statista survey via Digital Information World, Axis Intelligence).
Most people who own one never think about where the "intelligence" actually runs. I do, because I build AI systems for a living, and the first architectural decision in any of them is the same: where does the compute live?
In March 2025 that question stopped being abstract. Amazon told Echo owners that the "Do Not Send Voice Recordings" setting would stop working on March 28, because the generative features in Alexa+ depend on its cloud (TechCrunch). The setting only covered a few...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to hackernoon.com. To see the full text click HERE
