Ever feel like your AI assistant is secretly judging your search history? Like maybe it’s side-eyeing your 3 AM question about whether cats can wear tiny hats? Well, Pavel Durov, the mysterious boss of Telegram, just threw a wrench into the surveillance machine. He announced Cocoon, and it might just be the privacy blanket the internet desperately needs. So what’s the deal? In simple terms, Cocoon is a decentralized network where AI computations can happen in total secret. Think of it as a private, members-only club for your data, where the big tech bouncers—Amazon, Microsoft, et al.—aren’t allowed in. Your queries get processed in little digital vaults called Trusted Execution Environments, with no tracking and, get this, at prices cheaper than the mainstream guys. The best part? You can join the party if you have a spare GPU. Hook it up, contribute your computer's power, and help run this thing. This is hilarious for a few reasons. First, we’ve gone from mining imaginary coins with our graphics cards to renting out their brainpower for private AI chats. Your gaming rig could be earning its keep by helping someone secretly translate a message about, I don’t know, pickles, and it would have zero clue. The secrecy is so intense, even your own GPU is left in the dark. Second, Durov is essentially building a digital witness protection program for your random thoughts. Soon, Telegram might translate your messages without ever knowing what they say. The app will be winking at you like, “Your secret’s safe with me, pal.” But the real joke is on the expensive middlemen. The era of paying a premium to have your data quietly analyzed and sold might be getting a dramatic curtain call. Cocoon is flipping the script, putting control back into the weird, wonderful hands of users. It’s a step toward an internet where you don’t have to whisper your silly questions. So, is it a game-changer? Potentially. It turns every laptop with a decent graphics card into a tiny fortress of privacy, which is a pretty radical idea. The internet just got a little more confidential, and a lot more interesting. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to ask an AI, in total secrecy, how many pigeons it would take to lift a small car.