Decentralized AI networks turn phones into compute, skeptics push back

The pitch reframes idle consumer hardware as a supply-side answer to AI compute demand, but the skeptics' objection is the real story: performance and reliability are exactly what AI workloads are least forgiving about. That tension matters most for the networks themselves, which must prove phone-based capacity is usable rather than merely plentiful, and for the users whose devices would carry the load. The open question is whether these networks can demonstrate credible workload performance, or whether the model stays a narrative without a product.