Prediction Open AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 3/5 debate potential 3/5

80% of AI inference compute will move to the edge by 2035

Dr. Ben Lee · Will inference move to the edge? · Dec 18, 2025 · at 41:54

Computer science professor Dr. Ben Lee discusses future compute infrastructure with host Shail Khan, estimating the long-term division between edge and centralized data center workloads.

0:00 / 0:22exact quote · 22.1s
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“So I would say that we could be getting 80% of our compute done locally and leaving 20% of the heavy lifting or the more esoteric, the more corner case compute for the data center cloud. That is, of course, excluding the training. The training will Continue to all reside in the massive facilities, but in terms of the inference, I think there's huge potential.”

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