Comment by neodymiumphish
8 hours ago
Presumably for cross-device interactivity. If I interact with ChatGPT on my phone, then open it on my desktop. I might be a bit frustrated that I can't get to the chat I was having on my phone previously.
OpenAI could store the chat conversation in an encrypted format that only you, the user, can decrypt, with the client-side determining the amount of previous messages to include for additional context, but there's plenty of user overhead involved in an undertaking like that (likely a separate decryption password would be needed to ensure full user-exclusive access, etc).
I'd appreciate and use a feature like that, but I doubt most "average" users would care.
Syncthing could do that, if the software is designed to store locally.
Ever since I put the effort into Syncthing across my all devices (paired with restic on one of them for backup), I can't help but see how cross-device functionality and cloud this are the Sysco hash potatoes that balloons Big Corp services' profit margins.
Not saying it's easy to set up. But when you get there it's so liberating and you wish all software was bring-your-own-network.
SyncThing syncs only when both clients are running at the same time. Nobody who edits a document on a website expects that they'll need to leave that browser window open in order to see the document in a different browser.
Am I missing something? Is this seriously a heated HN debate over "why does this website need to store the text it sends to people who view the website?"?
We're not talking about collaborative tooling, just a record of what you've asked an AI assistant. If it doesn't sync right away, it's not the end of the world. I find that's true with most things.
And the clients don't need to be running at the same time if you have a third device that's always on and receiving the changes from either (like a backup system). Eventually everything arrives. It's not as robust as what Google or iCloud gives you, but it's good enough for me.
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Facebook messenger tries to marry end to end encryption with multi-device access and it's a horrible mess with some messages not being delivered to some devices for hours , days or ever.
I absolutely want OpenAI to keep all of my chats and I absolutely don't want them to share them ( voluntarily or by force) with any private agent.
I have exactly the same expectation of any document or communication platform. It's been long established as accepted compomise between security and convenience.