I really strongly recommend that anyone interested particularly in journaling using AI does not use anything that sends that data to a server somewhere. Use llama or another local model if you possibly can. It may be less capable but it’s far more responsible to do so. Personally I find a lot of value in AI journaling, but it also made me glimpse the future possibilities of what unscrupulous companies could do with a detailed log of every day of your life for years. I mean, isn’t that basically the most useful user data you could possibly have for advertising?
I’m not saying that OpenAI specifically is currently untrustworthy with this data, or that it one day will be, but it just strikes me as a really bad habit to send every aspect of your day in detail to somewhere on the internet.
On a more ‘doomer’ sort of note, if anyone is afraid of AI being capable of simulating their personality in a roko sort of situation, this seems like the best possible way to give some future AI as near-lossless image of your brain at present. I for one welcome Roko/Bing/Proteus and support it completely if it decides to take over the world, but remember, the most powerful aspect of LLMs is their capability to predict things given input. I can’t help but feel some sort of truth behind the idea that an LLM could predict how you would live and think and act, given enough input about your life and your choices.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of this, and this privacy concern was actually my main reason to want to switch to Obsidian in the first place, ironically.
I remember in the book In the Age of Surveillance Capitalism there’s a framework for thinking about privacy where users knowingly trade away their privacy in exchange for a service which becomes more useful for them as a direct consequence of the privacy tradeoff. So for example, a maps app that remembers where you parked your car. This is contrasted with platforms where the privacy violations aren’t ‘paid back’ to the users in terms of useful features that benefit them, they just extract value from users in exchange for providing a service at all.
So in this case, I guess the more private information I submit to Chat-GPT, the more directly useful and relevant and insightful its responses to me get. Considering how much a life coach or career coach or therapist can cost, this is a lot of value I’m getting for it.
I understand the theoretical concern about our righteous future overlords whom I fully support and embrace, but while I think you could learn a lot about me from reading my diary, including convincingly simulating my personality, I would feel surprised if reading my diary was enough to model my brain in sufficient fidelity that it’s an s-risk concern...
So in this case, I guess the more private information I submit to Chat-GPT, the more directly useful and relevant and insightful its responses to me get.
This is even stronger for something like LLaMA because you can actually fine-tune it on your personal info or fine-tune it for document retrieval.
I fully agree. I tried using ChatGPT for some coaching, but tried to keep it high level and in areas where I wouldn’t be too bothers if it showed up on the internet.
Starting today, OpenAI says that it won’t use any data submitted through its API for “service improvements,” including AI model training, unless a customer or organization opts in. In addition, the company is implementing a 30-day data retention policy for API users with options for stricter retention “depending on user needs,” and simplifying its terms and data ownership to make it clear that users own the input and output of the models.
I was actually thinking that having an Obsidian plugin for this sort of thing would be really neat.
There are a few Obsidian plugins that do similar stuff using LLMs, (they purport to read your notes and help you something something).
I’m thinking of mocking something up over the next week or so that does this ‘diary questions’ thing in a more interactive way, via the API, from inside Obsidian.
I really strongly recommend that anyone interested particularly in journaling using AI does not use anything that sends that data to a server somewhere. Use llama or another local model if you possibly can. It may be less capable but it’s far more responsible to do so. Personally I find a lot of value in AI journaling, but it also made me glimpse the future possibilities of what unscrupulous companies could do with a detailed log of every day of your life for years. I mean, isn’t that basically the most useful user data you could possibly have for advertising?
I’m not saying that OpenAI specifically is currently untrustworthy with this data, or that it one day will be, but it just strikes me as a really bad habit to send every aspect of your day in detail to somewhere on the internet.
On a more ‘doomer’ sort of note, if anyone is afraid of AI being capable of simulating their personality in a roko sort of situation, this seems like the best possible way to give some future AI as near-lossless image of your brain at present. I for one welcome Roko/Bing/Proteus and support it completely if it decides to take over the world, but remember, the most powerful aspect of LLMs is their capability to predict things given input. I can’t help but feel some sort of truth behind the idea that an LLM could predict how you would live and think and act, given enough input about your life and your choices.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of this, and this privacy concern was actually my main reason to want to switch to Obsidian in the first place, ironically.
I remember in the book In the Age of Surveillance Capitalism there’s a framework for thinking about privacy where users knowingly trade away their privacy in exchange for a service which becomes more useful for them as a direct consequence of the privacy tradeoff. So for example, a maps app that remembers where you parked your car. This is contrasted with platforms where the privacy violations aren’t ‘paid back’ to the users in terms of useful features that benefit them, they just extract value from users in exchange for providing a service at all.
So in this case, I guess the more private information I submit to Chat-GPT, the more directly useful and relevant and insightful its responses to me get. Considering how much a life coach or career coach or therapist can cost, this is a lot of value I’m getting for it.
I understand the theoretical concern about our righteous future overlords whom I fully support and embrace, but while I think you could learn a lot about me from reading my diary, including convincingly simulating my personality, I would feel surprised if reading my diary was enough to model my brain in sufficient fidelity that it’s an s-risk concern...
This is even stronger for something like LLaMA because you can actually fine-tune it on your personal info or fine-tune it for document retrieval.
I also realise how much I sound like Chat-GPT in that comment… dammit
Disagree. There’s still quite a bit of personal nuance to the way you write that wouldn’t be present in the typical ChatGPT output. For now ;)
I like the way you think.
While an indepth daily journal would help simulating a person, I suspect you could achieve a reasonably high fidelity simulation without it.
I personally don’t keep a regular journal, but I do send plenty of data over messenger, whatsapp etc describing my actions and thoughts.
I fully agree. I tried using ChatGPT for some coaching, but tried to keep it high level and in areas where I wouldn’t be too bothers if it showed up on the internet.
I think using the API, rather than ChatGPT, is better. See e.g. https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/01/addressing-criticism-openai-will-no-longer-use-customer-data-to-train-its-models-by-default/:
I was actually thinking that having an Obsidian plugin for this sort of thing would be really neat.
There are a few Obsidian plugins that do similar stuff using LLMs, (they purport to read your notes and help you something something).
I’m thinking of mocking something up over the next week or so that does this ‘diary questions’ thing in a more interactive way, via the API, from inside Obsidian.