(edge
Artificial
Intelligence) Artificial intelligence (AI) functionality at the edge of the network. Whereas many virtual assistants and AI services use the cloud for the majority of their computing, edge AI runs in a local device. Also called "on-device AI," the ever-increasing capabilities of chips enable AI processing (inference engines) to take place in a user's computer, tablet or smartphone.
The Good and Bad
A major advantage of edge AI is that because processing takes place locally, it is not as vulnerable to eavesdropping as queries and responses traversing the Internet to a cloud service. However, there is always much more computing power in the cloud, and edge AI cannot solve problems in the same time frame. See
inference engine,
AI and
edge.
Hybrid AI
Hybrid AI is the combination of local and remote processing (edge AI and cloud). Hybrid processing is very common. For example, although a huge amount of local processing takes place within a virtual assistant such as Alexa, the cloud delivers the world of information to the device.