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Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

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Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#2
> With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models.

Indeed bizarre as the statement doesn't say much about data collection or retention.

More generally, I'm conflicted here -- I'm big on personal privacy but the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome. I'm hoping that powerful, locally-run AI models will become a mainstream alternative.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#5

> With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models. Indeed bizarre as the statement doesn't say much about data collection or retention. More generally, I'm conflicted here -- I'm big on personal privacy but the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome. I'm hoping that powerful, locally-run AI models will become a mai…

Personally, I prefer AI to stay in its own corner. Let ChatGPT, Gemini, and the rest be something I open when I need them, like a website or an app. I'm not really into the whole "everything should have AI built into it" idea.

It kind of reminds me of how the internet used to be. Back then, you had to go to a specific room to use the family computer. The internet was something you visited. Now, tech is everywhere, from our pockets to our bathrooms. I’m not sure I want AI following that same path.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#8
Things like these make me glad to have a Xiaomi phone with their minimal implementation of Google instead of a full on Android phone. I get to avoid this stuff being pushed on me, and I don't use any of the Xiaomi "AI" stuff (which wouldn't support foreign apps anyway).

Granted, my data is definitely being sent to Xiaomi analytics, fixed by NextDNS. Re: governmental influence, I'd prefer Chinese to US (then again, that is my ethnicity bias). Recent events make the two governments look more similar than ever.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#9

> With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models. Indeed bizarre as the statement doesn't say much about data collection or retention. More generally, I'm conflicted here -- I'm big on personal privacy but the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome. I'm hoping that powerful, locally-run AI models will become a mai…

My approach has been to lock AI assistants (for me, that's just Apple intelligence as far as I can help it) out of integrations with the vast majority of apps, and especially chat and email apps.

At some point, some reverse engineer will publish a writeup either confirming or denying how local these models are, how much data (and maybe even what data) is being sent up to the mothership, and how these integrations appear to be implemented.

It's not perfect, and it only offers a point-in-time view of the situation, but it's the best we can do in an intensely closed-source world. I'd be happier if these companies published the code (regardless of the license) and allowed users to test for build parity.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#10

> With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models. Indeed bizarre as the statement doesn't say much about data collection or retention. More generally, I'm conflicted here -- I'm big on personal privacy but the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome. I'm hoping that powerful, locally-run AI models will become a mai…

Maybe at some point, Apple is/was trying to do everything locally but it appears they have recently decided to move away from that idea and use OpenAI.

I can understand why: you’re only using locally-run AI models every so often (maybe a few times a day), but when you use it, you still want it to be fast.

So it will need to be a pretty heavy AI chip in your phone to be able to deliver that, which spends most of the time idling.

Since compute costs are insane for AI, it only makes sense to optimize this and do the inference in the cloud.

Maybe at some point local AI will be possible, but they’ll always be able to run much more powerful models in the cloud, because it makes much more sense from an economics point of view.

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