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Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

I don't trust corporations with my data.

So a serious AI product would have to have my data (contexts, conversations) in a "secure enclave". If backed up, it needs to be encrypted.

I want a context and history that, over time, essentially knows everything about me.

It's one of the things that has been rather fascinating about Claude & Co.— he'll come back with things like, "Since you are already familiar with the ESP32…" or, "You already have a heat press from your work with dye sublimation, that will work nicely to set the inks when you screen print t-shirts…"

(Shades of "Diamond Age"… I imagine it helping me recall things when I am in my old age, notice patterns in my life I might want to break free from, etc.)

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Using homomorphic encryption to protect your data is the way forward:

https://blog.google/security/how-google-is-making-private-ai...

I think this is getting at the inherent tension between what people actually want from AI, and what makes a profitable AI product. People want control and data in their own hands, companies want the opposite. Improving an AI product means making it behave less like a product. So why are we hunting for products? We should be going after solutions without predication on profitability for some party.

> It's one of the things that has been rather fascinating about Claude & Co.— he'll come back with things like, "Since you are already familiar with the ESP32…" or, "You already have a heat press from your work with dye sublimation, that will work nicely to set the inks when you screen print t-shirts…"

Amazon's Alexa does this kind of thing a lot based on purchase history. It reeks of upsell there to me. Instead of answering a question directly, it'll add something like "You've purchased ___ so this product should be a good fit for you" like it's trying to "close" the sale.

Phrases like you want are equal parts trying to sell a proposed solution and inventory/capability information in my opinion. Maybe my time in sales long ago made me sensitive to persuasive intent, but it always makes me suspicious.

The YouTuber polymatt recently did something like what you want using local models and a small robot for UI. I find that more compelling than putting more of my data in a public cloud in any form. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxjuEHTKXMw

I don't mind if it's in the cloud if I consent. I always prefer a local-first option. I'm usually attracted to products that offer that. Maybe there are extra features or functionalities if my data is stored on the cloud, but any product that offers a local-first approach is always my preference.

Fortunately, self-hosting is the answer. And more, fortunately, it has become pretty easy to self-host apps and keep your data

Plugging moose os here

I think you'd find https://gwern.net/guardian-angel quite interesting.

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