Protesters have been raging about giant data centers guzzling power, water and land. But here’s an environmentally-friendly solution: standalone apps that don’t connect to the internet.

When you use free apps like Atomic Chat, Google’s AI Edge Gallery, LLM Studio, or Ollama, you sever your cord to the cloud. Unlike ChatGPT and other AI bots, these apps don’t require a web window. They allow you to download their brains to work offline.

In short, by using these apps, you won’t cause electricity demand to shoot up the way it would with cloud-based AI bots. When you type a prompt into ChatGPT, Gemini and other standard AI services, your request travels to massive server farms that consume staggering amounts of electricity to process your words. They also require millions of gallons of water just to keep the server racks cool. Local apps flip the script. In fact, apps like Atomic Chat are able to compress an AI’s active memory by six times, allowing longer conversations without as much random access memory.

These apps are also private. Since your data never leaves your phone, tablet or computer, you don’t even need an account. 

So here’s the first catch. The minimum to run a capable local model is 16 gigabytes of system RAM and either a GPU with over six GB of VRAM (video memory) or an Apple Silicon Mac. Your Windows PC would need a dedicated graphics processing unit with at least six GB of its own video memory. An NVIDIA card works best. Otherwise, your AI answer might trickle in, one word at a time, while your laptop’s fan goes crazy.

Here’s the other catch. The standalone apps can’t browse the morning news, look up current stock prices, or check the weather for your upcoming trip unless you plug in advanced technical extensions. But what they can do is remarkable. Ask one to translate a document, debug a computer program, draft a short story or song lyrics, or brainstorm solutions to a thorny problem, such as how to preserve seed diversity for future generations. They’re less like encyclopedias or online newspapers and more like tireless thinking partners who happen to work without WiFi.

So who would most likely benefit? First, anyone who needs total privacy, with no chance of data sharing. Second, travelers in remote regions where WiFi is spotty. Third, anyone who loves to tinker with the latest open-source breakthroughs, or find out how AI reasoning works under the hood.

But someday this offline world could be the norm. We’re now in a transition phase. For example, Microsoft recently announced a massive shift to treat Windows as a “Local AI Runtime,” meaning future Windows updates will process background AI tasks right on your device rather than constantly calling home to the cloud.

Apple Intelligence already relies on a similar hybrid model. If you ask your phone to summarize a long text message or an email, it doesn’t send it to a data center. It crunches it locally using its built-in hardware. 

Finally, businesses are increasingly adopting local, sandboxed desktop applications to protect proprietary corporate data.

I guess those big data centers will have to become either condos or warehouses. 

Talking to AI in Midair

American Airlines now offers free high-speed WiFI on most flights. You’re no longer limited to the AA movie, TV and music channel. 

With free connections, you could converse with ChatGPT or some other AI bot for an entire flight. You do have to sign up for a free AAdvantage membership, however, but you can ​d​o it from your airplane seat.

Senior Phone

Consumer Cellular’s SpeakEasy is a new phone aimed at seniors 75 and older. 

The home screen features only calling, texting, photos and videos. The buttons are large, backlit and easy to read. The volume keys are on the front. The speakerphone is extra loud. The service is fairly cheap too: It’s $14.95 a month for 500MB of data on the Speak Easy Flip. It’s $19.95 a month for the SpeakEasy Smart. Though the Smart is an Android phone, it’s designed to be super simple to use. 

The Jitterbug Smart4 is similar to the SpeakEasy Smart. Choose the Jitterbug if you want its famous round-the-clock nurse lines and medical assistance when you press the Urgent Response button. Go with the SpeakEasy if you prefer cheaper monthly data plans. 

The Jitterbug flip phone is also great for medical and other help. Just press “O” for Operator​. Years ago, using a free phone the company gave me, I did that ​a​fter getting lost in San Diego in the rain. 

Touchless ID

You can breeze even faster through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) line at the airport by signing up for “Touchless ID.” Before you had to manually enter your passport info for each airline you used. But with the new version, you just add your boarding pass to Google Wallet. After approval, it will have a PreCheck Touchless ID icon on it. 

Million Dollar Giveaway

The US Department of Transportation will award five people $100,000 each for ideas on how robotics can transform our transportation networks. One person will get a million dollars. For more info, sign up for “DOT’s Bot Challenge,” an online webinar on Wednesday, July 8 at 3 p.m. ET. Or write to robotics@dot.gov. 

Filed under: AI, free stuff, phones, security