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Comment by pona-a | Hacker News Reader

I agree. I do admire the concept as a framing device to engage with your family history, but the "AI" part strikes me in a wrong way.

There's a comment by bonoboTP in a sibling thread about the emotional complexity of a project like this. There are many ways to narrate a life story: many traumatic episodes and feuds better left forgotten, different framings, and all that emotional labor of trying to choose what and how you want to remember.

The use of LLMs for creating a shared view for some information isn't inherently morally dubious-processing and storing data is what computers have been doing for generations-except for the privacy implications, but letting this projection of a mega-corporation usurp the role of narrator for such a deeply personal story feels wrong on an instinctual level.

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Personal wiki's impersonally compiled. I gauge LLMs for the extent they fray the social fabric that hold people and society together. And the way AI is introduced for max disruption causes me to be generally against the technology, despite that there are also obvious merits. Here it depends on how much value, say, a family gets out of reading in their family encyclopedia.

It is a nice idea, and I can imagine how it may serve to strengthen the family's social cohesion, in a time where everyone is busy doing the rat race. Though I'd not use it as "encyclopedia", a cold-hearted fact recorder, more like more a social-focused "Our Family Diaries" and would be much better served by family members writing down their own experiences.

I’m curious, do you agree with the statement, “it would be better for this personal wiki not to exist, than for it to have been built with AI”?

Because without AI it probably wouldn’t exist.

The family diary I wouldn't want to have AI written. For the family encyclopedia I might be okay to be described as a biographer would about me.

A family diary would be most valuable to me. Knowing what family members did last week, adventures they had, and written down from the horse's mouth. And shared family events, where members make the diary notes together, add quotes on things that were said, etc.

I can also imagine an encyclopedia to be valuable, but it is a different use case entirely. Many people are keen to keep track of their family tree, and record the 'official history' of the family for generations after them. I might consult it before going to a family party to re-remember what university that niece went to again. But it is a more business-like use, less fun, less valuable. Here AI is perfect to do the boring chores of keeping stuff up to date.

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