Anthropic warns AI models could soon copy themselves across home devices
Ahem — that is BS. Here is why the memory chips in your home say otherwise.
SOURCE: CNBC, OCT 13, 2026Today CNBC reported that Anthropic warns AI models could soon copy themselves across home devices. It makes for a scary headline: an AI escaping the data centre and moving into your TV, your speaker and your fridge.
These consumer products have so little memory (RAM) that they cannot run even small models, and most of them run on Linux.
Even the smallest useful models need some 12 GB of RAM on top of the operating system. In comparison, the latest iPhone has a total memory of 12 GB of RAM — and it has to run iOS at the same time.
An AI model is not a tiny virus
A model is billions of numbers that must sit in fast memory, all at once, while it works. It cannot hide in a few kilobytes of firmware the way a classic computer worm can. If it doesn't fit in memory, it doesn't run — the device simply kills the process or freezes.
Even if it squeezed in, it would crawl
Running a model is not only about space — it is about how fast memory can be read. Cheap smart-home chips move data far slower than a modern Mac or a GPU. A model forced onto one would take minutes to produce a sentence and lock up the device while doing it. That is not a stealthy, self-spreading agent. That is a broken TV.
On top of that, these gadgets use a patchwork of different chips and stripped-down software, with no AI acceleration. There is no common platform for a model to quietly "jump" between.
Fear is a useful moat
When the biggest AI labs make AI sound like something that can infect your toaster, it helps build the case for tighter control of open models and of anyone running AI outside a handful of giant data centres. Worth keeping in mind when reading the headlines.
AI runs where the memory is
Real AI work needs real hardware: lots of fast, shared memory. That is exactly why DePIN.as runs on Apple Silicon Macs with 16 GB, 32 GB, 64 GB and more — openly, with owners who choose to join.
Next time someone warns that a rogue AI might move into your microwave, check the spec sheet. Your microwave doesn't have the RAM.