I’ve been digging into the rabbit hole for a few months. Been switching to Linux, FOSS everything I can, trying to go to smaller sites, the least dubious social media, VPN, trusted mail, etc etc
But lately I’ve been in a rough state mentally (I say lately but it’s always been with me) and having GPT guide me and being able to just dictate what I think helps me a lot on various levels, for various reasons.
But at this point, using ChatGPT with a mic, isn’t this basically cancelling every effort I’ve made? (using it in the first place anyway)
I’m weak and it helps me, should I just throw my efforts out of the window and just say I don’t care about privacy anymore and use whatever everyone uses? (on one hand, I’ve found alternatives for almost everything, so I could keep on using those, but also, again, if I keep on using GPT on a regular basis, this is probably the worst threat the future has to offer in termes of privacy, so…I’m lost)
The obsession with privacy can be taken to an extreme where it’s a negative for your mental health. You can sacrifice a little privacy for another important benefit. 100% privacy is either not possible or practical, so don’t let it stress you out. I’d be more concerned that AI might lead you down a wrong path, but you’re an adult, use your own judgement.
I feel like the “getting into privacy” journey for a lot of people tends to look like a bell curve - you start off with a few apps and minor tweaks to protect you from the worst online privacy invasions, and then it gradually builds and builds until you become the sort of person that has all their cat pictures on an air-gapped encrypted server hidden in a cupboard somewhere while you use SearX to find the best mask that will confuse facial recognition cameras, and then after a while you break through and just go back to using a few apps and tweaks to protect from the worst of it again.
I get that, but the problem with this kind of AI is, I feel like I’m sacrificing a lot, not a little.
Don’t make a bigger deal out of it than it is. Nothing bad is going to happen.
host your own AI using: https://ollama.com/
this paired with “AnythingLLM” is pretty powerful, and you dont have to worry about data being sent anywhere
I have been suggested to self host in the past. But as I’m concerned for ecology, and let’s be a honest, a bit of my money too, I’ve thought that self hosting, meaning having the PC always on, was not a good thing. So I left the dilemma in this state, not knowing how “bad” this would actually be in terms of electric consumption, and if it was worth the trade with privacy or not.
Go set up an ollama instance and melt your worries away. Data in your hands once again.
However, you should also learn some restraint. Privacy and security aren’t an all or nothing battle. Everyone has some holes in their armor, they need them to breathe.
that’s a nice way to view it
I didn’t tell ChatGPT who I am. I have a separate email address for it and everything.
Just keep in back of mind how everything is being linked and profiled behind the scenes. Without anything else, all they have to link you to other things is an IP address and an email. IP addresses aren’t terribly reliable these days. There may be supercookie/fingerprinting mischief going on though.
Yes, you are leaking data, but don’t panik. First of all, your mental health here and now is important - without it you won’t have energy for other things. Next, It takes a lot of energy to de-google or de-corp and you don’t wan’t to ‘leak’ now, but in 6 months, you’ll have your own private/foss talking AI assistant, and it will help you cut the ties to the last corporation then.
So, soon you’ll be more ‘invisible’ for the corps, and maybe you can live with the spying/manipulation for a moment longer ? Not sure how long it takes for their AI to find you anyway, but at least the removed have to work for it…
Alternatively, get a free account at Groq (also have ‘whisper’ stt), or sambanova and install/use open-webui for talking. These new hardware corps don’t train AI on free user interactions, and they probably don’t sell your information - yet. There are other methods for p2p sharing of AI resources, but they may not provide quality high enough or with all modalities.
If I may offer a suggestion:
OpenwebUI in a docker image, cloudflare tunnel set up to enable access outside the home, the cheapest domain name you can get.
You can selfhost your ChatGPT bot so you can keep your data to yourself!
You’ll need a decently powerful PC at home, nothing crazy, any decent gaming rig from the last 5 years should run it fine!
Use Andisearch, there are zero privacy concerns and it’s apart the most accurate (independent Benchmark)
I honestly am not sure on the privacy of it but if you really need a useful tool that’s ai driven I tend to trust perplexity.ai for general questions and research but I agree with one of the others just run ollama if you can
Spend $500, buy a beefy used GPU and run Whisper + Mistral small. It’ll be a bit slow but now you can maintain your privacy on your own hardware! Best of both worlds.
