But not just AI bots or interfaces. Everything is saved and never deleted.
Remember Facebook? "We will never delete anything" that is their business.
So anything that you put on those "services" is gone out of your hands. But we still have an option, is to stop using these ads company and let them die.
Back to AI, there are loads of offline models we can use. Many like Ollama that will even download it. Install Ollama, on the ollama site find a model name and "ollama run model-name" and you can use it.
Ok, it is not as chatgpt5 but it can help you so much, that you might not even need chatgpt.
I recently set up LM Studio and have run open AI's 20b model locally using an AMD 9070 + 9800x3d. I honestly assumed it would be way more work than it was to set it up. It has limitations, but given it took me all of 5min and I can easily attach docs for it to reference as it all runs locally...it's fantastic. I've got a Claude model I've been messing with too.
There are also things like Oobabooga's text-generation-webui[0] which can present a similar interface to ChatGPT for local models.
I've had great success in running Qwen3-8B-GGUF[1] on my RTX 2070 SUPER (8GB VRAM) using Oobabooga (everyone just calls it via the author's name, it's much catchier) so this is definitely doable on consumer hardware. Specifically, I run the Q4_K_M model as Oobabooga loads all of its layers into the GPU by default, making it nice and snappy. (Testing has shown that I can actually load up to the Q6_K model before some layers have to be loaded into the CPU, but I have to manually specify that all those layers should be loaded into the GPU, as opposed to leaving it auto-determined.)
It does obviously hallucinate more often than ChatGPT does, so care should be taken. That said, it's really nice to have something local.
> Back to AI, there are loads of offline models we can use. Many like Ollama that will even download it. Install Ollama, on the ollama site find a model name and "ollama run model-name" and you can use it.
A privilege that is limited to the top 1%. It may come as a surprise, but most people don't have 32GB of VRAM [0]. The rest of us with normal people hardware are stuck with AI cloud providers or good old searching, which is a lot harder now that those same AI providers have ruined search results.
[0] There are some lightweight models you can run on normal people hardware, but they are just too unreliable even for casual usage and are likely to waste more of your time than they save.
Facebook doesn't just get data from direct input from users though. So if people stop using FB, that's a good first step, that does not stop the firehose of data.
I would expect this, but it doesn't seem to be the case.
If I ask for search.brave.com to give me a list of gini coefficients for the top ten countries by GDP, it can't do it. However, if I tell it the data is available on the CIA world factbook, it can then spit that info out promptly. However, if I close the context and ask again, it hasn't learned this information and once again is unable to provide the list.
It didn't datamine me. It had no better idea where to find this information the second time I asked. This is the experience others have stated with other AIs as well. It does not seem special to brave.
You’re expecting models to constantly retrain themselves based on riddles. That’s not very reasonable nor is it even economically feasible right now. At massive scale, I question whether it’s even technically feasible.
> So, kids, let's not be asking any AI chatbot whether you should divorce your husband, how to cheat on your taxes, or if you should try to get your boss fired. That information will be kept, it may be revealed in a security breach, and, if so, it will come back to bite you in the buns.
Just as a PSA - there's nothing unique to AIs here - whenever you ask a question of anyone, in any way, they then have the memory of you having asked it. A lot of sitcoms and comedic plays have the plot premise build upon such questions that a person voiced then eventually reaching (either accurately or inaccurately) the person they were hiding the question from.
And as someone who's into spy stories, I know that a big part of tradecraft is of formulating your questions in a way that divulges the least about your actual intentions and current information.
If anything, LLM-driven AIs are the first technology that in principle allow you to ask a complex question that would be immediately forgotten. The thing is that you need to be running the AI yourself; if you ask an AI controlled by another entity, then you're trusting that entity with your question, regardless of whether there's an AI on the way.
The questions and info you ask friends doesn't end up in a massive data profile on you stored in somebody's cloud to be used for future manipulation/marketing/profiling...
> And as someone who's into spy stories, I know that a big part of tradecraft is of formulating your questions in a way that divulges the least about your actual intentions and current information.
Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but if everyone started doing this, we will be in XY problem city.
> The more data you give any of the AI services, the more that information can potentially be used against you.
It may seem obvious, but Sam Altman also recently emphasized that the information you share with ChatGPT is not confidential, and could potentially be used against you in court.
Hasn't that always been the case? Phone companies providing records of calls and text messages, etc? Anything stored on someone else's servers is going to be something they have a duty to provide to police/courts, assuming they fall under that jurisdiction.
Everyone knows this. Every layperson I talk to is aware that these companies are siphoning their information. When free email was introduced over two decades ago, the behaviour was the same. Everyone knew Microsoft and Google could read your emails. Then, like now, people think it's worth it. It is too useful a tool to have and the price is palatable.
What people don't want to do is sign up for yet another subscription. There's immense subscription fatigue among the general population, especially in tough economic times such as now.
If you ask a layperson the answer is - "Yes, and?". If its free, very few people care. Sure you can run a local instance and yes, it might be as simple as downloading Ollama but not many will do it or even have a powerful enough computer to run it.
Worst yet you might individually make a choice to do that but others might not care. They might share email/chats with you to a chatbot to parse it or "make it think like them" and then the chatbot has info about you. So, as much as I understand this sentiment this seems like a losing battle.
This is also true of search engines, social media, and various other interactive systems. Google's initial search-algorithm breakthrough was the realization that they had a massive source of data for search result correctness in the form of the behavior of users querying their site.
In general, it's wise to assume that all web interactions are a two-way street between the user and the service provider.
I have an issue with "stupidity" suggestion. Clicking "Agree" without full analysis is tried and true Internet tradition, it's so sad somebody assumes it's serious and attempts to use it. We should have legal protections against wringing quasi-agreements from customers and then using them against.
Unlike previous technologies, chatbots know what users think at the most intimate level. Chatbots know, but currently cannot make sense of this knowledge. The near term goal, I believe, is to build simple, but accurate models of the users psyche to serve them ads better. Instead of crude labels like "user 456 loves cars", corpos will have a compact psyche model of that user that will predict his reactions with 95% accuracy. This model will know that user better than he knows himself. And for a brief moment in history, while AI is good enough to predict us, but not replace us, the adtech corpos will make bank.
From what I know, only people who DELIBERATELY SHARED their chats and IGNORED THE WARNING that it makes them public had their chats appear in search engine results.
I refused to use chatGPT until they created the public version that you could use without signing-up.
I later started using Gemini but I use it without signing in to try to ensure my privacy.
I recently came across this App [0] and I've been trying/using it. I end up going back to Gemini if what I need is quite complicated but it's not that common these days.
36 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 43.6 ms ] threadBut not just AI bots or interfaces. Everything is saved and never deleted.
Remember Facebook? "We will never delete anything" that is their business.
So anything that you put on those "services" is gone out of your hands. But we still have an option, is to stop using these ads company and let them die.
Back to AI, there are loads of offline models we can use. Many like Ollama that will even download it. Install Ollama, on the ollama site find a model name and "ollama run model-name" and you can use it.
Ok, it is not as chatgpt5 but it can help you so much, that you might not even need chatgpt.
I've had great success in running Qwen3-8B-GGUF[1] on my RTX 2070 SUPER (8GB VRAM) using Oobabooga (everyone just calls it via the author's name, it's much catchier) so this is definitely doable on consumer hardware. Specifically, I run the Q4_K_M model as Oobabooga loads all of its layers into the GPU by default, making it nice and snappy. (Testing has shown that I can actually load up to the Q6_K model before some layers have to be loaded into the CPU, but I have to manually specify that all those layers should be loaded into the GPU, as opposed to leaving it auto-determined.)
It does obviously hallucinate more often than ChatGPT does, so care should be taken. That said, it's really nice to have something local.
There's a subreddit for running text gen models locally that people might be interested in: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLlama
[0] https://github.com/oobabooga/text-generation-webui
[1] https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3-8B-GGUF
A privilege that is limited to the top 1%. It may come as a surprise, but most people don't have 32GB of VRAM [0]. The rest of us with normal people hardware are stuck with AI cloud providers or good old searching, which is a lot harder now that those same AI providers have ruined search results.
[0] There are some lightweight models you can run on normal people hardware, but they are just too unreliable even for casual usage and are likely to waste more of your time than they save.
If you are here and you require this reminder I would like to think that you are very lost.
https://ssd.eff.org
https://privacyguides.net
If I ask for search.brave.com to give me a list of gini coefficients for the top ten countries by GDP, it can't do it. However, if I tell it the data is available on the CIA world factbook, it can then spit that info out promptly. However, if I close the context and ask again, it hasn't learned this information and once again is unable to provide the list.
It didn't datamine me. It had no better idea where to find this information the second time I asked. This is the experience others have stated with other AIs as well. It does not seem special to brave.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44778764
Interesting how much traction
gets in news articles.People don't seem to have the same intuition for the web that they used to!
Just as a PSA - there's nothing unique to AIs here - whenever you ask a question of anyone, in any way, they then have the memory of you having asked it. A lot of sitcoms and comedic plays have the plot premise build upon such questions that a person voiced then eventually reaching (either accurately or inaccurately) the person they were hiding the question from.
And as someone who's into spy stories, I know that a big part of tradecraft is of formulating your questions in a way that divulges the least about your actual intentions and current information.
If anything, LLM-driven AIs are the first technology that in principle allow you to ask a complex question that would be immediately forgotten. The thing is that you need to be running the AI yourself; if you ask an AI controlled by another entity, then you're trusting that entity with your question, regardless of whether there's an AI on the way.
Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but if everyone started doing this, we will be in XY problem city.
It may seem obvious, but Sam Altman also recently emphasized that the information you share with ChatGPT is not confidential, and could potentially be used against you in court.
[1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/altman-your-chatgpt-conversations...
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/25/sam-altman-warns-theres-no...
It would be weird for him not to be transparent about that
Oh, nice idea. We should all ask that.
https://privacy.anthropic.com/en/articles/10023555-how-do-yo...
> We do not actively set out to collect personal data to train our models
The 'snarky tech guy' tone of the article is a bit like nails on a chalkboard.
Otherwise, I use local for complex for potentially controversial questions.
What people don't want to do is sign up for yet another subscription. There's immense subscription fatigue among the general population, especially in tough economic times such as now.
Worst yet you might individually make a choice to do that but others might not care. They might share email/chats with you to a chatbot to parse it or "make it think like them" and then the chatbot has info about you. So, as much as I understand this sentiment this seems like a losing battle.
In general, it's wise to assume that all web interactions are a two-way street between the user and the service provider.
https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/data-usage
Which makes this article quite misleading.
I later started using Gemini but I use it without signing in to try to ensure my privacy.
I recently came across this App [0] and I've been trying/using it. I end up going back to Gemini if what I need is quite complicated but it's not that common these days.
[0] https://ai.nocommandline.com