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Comment by brtkwr | Hacker News Reader

I’ve also found it useful for personal stuff. For example I have my OpenClaw bot in a family group on Telegram and everyday it asks my family members stories from their lives that it meticulously documents and uses as a basis for further questions in the future and has so far managed to build a rich family history spanning 50 odd family members (a project I had always been planning to do for never found the time to).

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I can't relate to this need to fully explore and then document everyone's history - I can have a conversation for an evening and forget everything the next day, and I'm happy with that, the truly important things (to me) will distill themselves naturally.

A case of different strokes for different folks I suppose.

In my case, I was curious about my ancestry and Nepal doesn't currently have an equivalent of an ancestry.com therefore the best source of the information is my family themselves while they're still alive.

I am weirded out but this, I find it horrific, like some kind of mind zombie, leeching humanity from your family members.

Someone somewhere is thinking they're connecting with you and sharing their humanity but they're just shoveling their soul into a machine that is "meticulously documenting" them.

Sorry, but ick.

To give a different perspective: archival is important. If nobody does this job, generational knowledge is lost at some point.

I talked plenty with my grandpa, but I'm sure he didn't even tell me 20% of his life.

And my other grandpa died when I was still a kid, so I didn't even get to have adult conversations with him.

Imagine making this available to your grandgrandgrandson.

Yeah, but you're kaoD. You're a bonafide person. You should talk with other people; it's good. (We're chatting right now.)

That's quite different from chatting with a bot that pretends to be human. (Do you want to chat with my bot?)

Yes. And I will die along with the memories from my grandpa. Most of them died already with him, and I don't remember all our conversations.

I have no kids but, even if I did, let's say I'd pass 20% of the 20% he passed on to me, and they pass 20% of the 20% of the 20%... You get the idea.

Heck, I already forgot 50% of my life since I don't have a journal!

This is not an "either" situation. Archival is important.

People write memories for a reason. This is automating the process, not superseding human communication.

I am the sort of person that never took photos (live in the moment yadda yadda). 15 years later, I'm starting to regret it.

Why does it have to be black and white? Why can't a bot do the exploration and notetaking along with people in the channel?

That's not how I interpreted it as being in this instance, but it could certainly be that way.

I guess that'd be like keeping all correspondence in a shoe box (to be reviewed later -- or maybe never), or maybe the automated recording of my phone calls with others (which is completely legal where I am; I don't even have to tell them).

And I suppose whether I felt that would be creepy or not depends a lot upon intent, and consent.

If the intent were pure and good, and the consent both informed and granted, then I'd have no problem with any of this at all -- whether a shoebox, a tape recorder, or a bot is involved in taking the notes.

I called my parents, told them about the idea, they never even had Telegram before we started this project but they especially joined when they learnt that I was trying to build a family history. They are native Nepalese speakers therefore the system promptensured that the bot always responds to their questions and answers in Nepalese.

It is really easy to way over think, or over feel, AI.

Sometimes it's just a really good interface that matches the task well.

Think of all the people that still avoided getting a computer a decade or two ago, because "online" was so unnatural and creepy to them. Obviously, the internet had and has those places. And frankly a lot of social media still is.

But it can also just be wikipedia, making flight reservations, etc. When that is all it is doing, what you want it to do, that is all it is.

An automated language interface can just be a really good note collector/collator.

Personally, I look forward to the wise, well dressed, well spoken, waist-up robot bartenders we have been promised by movies for decades. Not creepy at all!

Btw my family know they are talking to the bot and they know that the bot is taking notes for our benefit. And I am in the channel and I enjoy reading those stories myself and would have never thought to ask those questions myself. Sometimes I ask the follow up questions myself too...

Well that makes it a lot less bad, it sounded from your post like it messages on your behalf and as you.

If it identifies as a bot then I find it a lot less objectionable.

I still wouldn't do it myself, but I can put the pitchfork down.

hi, cool use-case! Question: do they have to type it, or one can upload an audio (old people such as me may talk for 5mins about a mini-story vs typing for 20mins, especially if they use a phone vs windows telegram application (typing on a keyboard vs the smartphone). in which case, do you got a STT 'module' that will pick up the audio, transcribe it, and then 'process' it?

I actually think this is cool. How is this different than sitting people down with a camera every day and asking for a new random story? we won't be around forever and documenting it is one way to keep memories alive in people's minds

I was surprised myself how engaged my family have been with the bot. And equipped with the knowledge of our family history, it is able to ask deeply informed follow up questions! I would recommend trying it!

Would you feel differently if it was an app that sent notifications every day to people to document their thoughts/memories?

I think the ick factor you are feeling is from anthromorphizing a computer program by thinking its a "mind zombie".

You are making a lot of assumptions.

I hope OP is using some self-hosted local model to document their family archives

This is actually a really interesting use case for a local model.

The writing might be a bit mediocre but it would capture all the information.

Parent post really stumbled on a great idea here.

Wow. This is a really cool idea. I am using Obsidian for family history, but I never thought to let people chat with it and update it via OpenClaw.

This is a great idea! I’d be curious to learn more about your setup, particularly how it asks your family and follows up with further questions? Does it do it based on a graph of your family it builds real time? Or is it smart enough that you just prompt it to “follow up with more questions”? I’m having a hard time imagining it asking my family engaging questions they won’t just say, “I don’t remember”.

This is to the people who are highly against this - when you read a book you are doing this - talking to others across time and space. This isn't that much different.

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