Lesson 2025 of 2116
AI On-Device: Phi, Gemma, and When Tiny Models Make Sense
4B-parameter models run on your laptop and phone. They're not GPT-5 — but they're surprisingly useful.
Lesson map
What this lesson covers
Learning path
The main moves in order
- 1The premise
- 2on-device
- 3Phi
- 4Gemma
Concept cluster
Terms to connect while reading
Section 1
The premise
Small models running locally trade peak quality for privacy, offline capability, and zero per-call cost.
What AI does well here
- Privacy-sensitive text processing
- Offline summarization and classification
- Local autocomplete and quick assistants
- Edge devices and mobile apps
What AI cannot do
- Match frontier models on hard reasoning
- Handle very long contexts comfortably
- Replace cloud models for ambiguous, complex prompts
- Stay current — they don't auto-update
Key terms in this lesson
End-of-lesson quiz
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