Can Decentralized Phone Networks Power the AI Revolution?

Cointelegraph reports that, facing scrutiny over AI data-center energy use and cost, projects such as Acurast and Phase are trying to use distributed smartphone computing power to build decentralized AI infrastructure. Acurast claims it has onboarded over 335,000 smartphones, with about 40,000 active daily, providing compute capacity equivalent to roughly 2,340 high-end data-center servers. Phase plans to use phones as proxies for AI agents and charge fees in USDT. However, device coordination, battery life, connectivity, and economic incentives remain major challenges.