Ask HN: How would you build second brain in the AI era? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How would you build second brain in the AI era?

9 pointsdivan5 comments

A lot of people use 'second brain' software and are now trying to connect/integrate them with LLMs.

But if you were starting with a new 'second brain' from scratch, how would you do it, given the current state (and trends) in AI/LLMs?

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Less structure? I think links are less necessary. It's a bit like using email when search is cheap, you don't need to rely on tags if you don't want to.

I have a fairly large set of notes written in Org, and I never bothered with internal links. Ripgrep search was always enough for me to make connections.

With local LLMs, it's even better. gptel makes it really easy to add notes as context.

I wouldn't. It's a vulnerability to have your data somewhere else.

People know this. The first actual "second brain" of some sorts is likely to be unwilling, made by someone else trying to capture the thoughts of a subject. It is also likely that it will fail (given the fact we don't know shit about how brains work).

I think it depends on what the person does. I'm a knowledge worker, so this works for me. Other people may see little use in notes.

A pool of well-structured notes and knowledge with an "AI technologies du jour" trained on it.

I currently use Obsidian and some tools for this, although it's not completely frictionless yet.

I would like to give him a curated set of books, then have a discussion.

Also I would like to share all my life with some kind of LLM but I really want that data to be just for me.

I would much rather just contribute to the AI directly. I am kind of tired having to use so many different tools. I don’t even want to login or authenticate with dozens or hundreds of them.

Why won’t these companies completely transform how we work/vibe by having everything go through the chat/voice ui? It should just work, for the end user.

I’d love to be an agnostic business analyst for OpenAI or Anthropic. Used to be a business analyst and I loved understanding as much about an industry or domain and then working with stakeholders to come up with solutions.

Imagine if there were teams of business analysts internally at these companies to build out that super app.. supply chain (procurement, resolutions, dispatch), partner management, customer support, calling someone video or voice, all my documents, everything I keep basically. I want to work and communicate with other people over it. It should just work. All work is communication between people right?

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