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Personal Encyclopedias

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Re: Personal Encyclopedias

#31
post #2

That sounds like a really cool project and a really interesting way to preserve family history. I feel like i don't know how to emotionally react to the AI part of this story. To begin with, it is fundamentally cool we have technology like that. At the same time it felt bittersweet, like an artisan being put out of business by the factory. The first part of the story felt like much of the love was in constructing eve…

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.

Re: Personal Encyclopedias

#32
I actually spent a weekend last yr doing something similar. Went through a box of old photos with my dad and wrote things down before the stories were lost. Never thought to structure it as a wiki though. Way better than the Google doc I ended up with.

The bank transaction + location cross referencing to figure out which restaurants you went to is pretty cool. Would be great if this could pull in social media exports too. Point it at your X, IG, FB archives, let it draft pages/content from that.

Any plan for a timeline view? Wiki format works well for depth but sometimes you just want to scroll through a year.

Re: Personal Encyclopedias

#34
post #29

I like my memories ephemeral and fragile. Reading AI-generated articles about my loved ones in the typical apathetic Wikipedia tone sounds like a deeply unnerving experience to me.

Yeah, that's my feeling too. It's an impressive and interesting project, but I don't want to do that with my life. It has had its ups and downs and some things I just don't want to dive back into like that (and don't want others to read either).

The genealogy part – researching my ancestors' life – feels more useful.

Re: Personal Encyclopedias

#36
post #29

I like my memories ephemeral and fragile. Reading AI-generated articles about my loved ones in the typical apathetic Wikipedia tone sounds like a deeply unnerving experience to me.

Would there be any obligation to read the bits concerning yourself ?

I see this more as a digital artifact for future generations. I would love to read all about the events in the lives of my ancestors (no matter how detached the narration) going back generations.

Imagine if you could read in detail about your parental ancestors in 1500s, what they worked as, what they liked doing, where they spent their first holiday together…

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