Comment by shaftway
2 days ago
This feels like an area Google would have an advantage though. Look at all of the data about you that Google has and it could mine across Wallet, Maps, Photos, Calendar, GMail, and more. Google knows my name, address, drivers license, passport, where I work, when I'm home, what I'm doing tomorrow, when I'm going on vacation and where I'm going, and whole litany of other information.
The real challenge for Google is going to be using that information in a privacy-conscious way. If this was 2006 and Google was still a darling child that could do no wrong, they'd have already integrated all of that information and tried to sell it as a "magical experience". Now all it'll take is one public slip-up and the media will pounce. I bet this is why they haven't done that integration yet.
I used to think that, too, but I don't think it's the case.
Many people slowly open up to an LLM as if they were meeting someone. Sure, they might open up faster or share some morally questionable things earlier on, but there are some things that they hide even from the LLM (like one hides thoughts from oneself, only to then open up to a friend). To know that an LLM knows everything about you will certainly alienate many people, especially because who I am today is very different from who I was five years ago, or two weeks ago when I was mad and acted irrationally.
Google has loads of information, but it knows very little of how I actually think. Of what I feel. Of the memories I cherish. It may know what I should buy, or my interests in general. It may know where I live, my age, my friends, the kind of writing I had ten years ago and have now, and many many other things which are definitely interesting and useful, but don't really amount to knowing me. When people around me say "ChatGPT knows them", this is not what they are talking about at all. (And, in part, it's also because they are making some of it up, sure)
We know a lot about famous people, historical figures. We know their biographies, their struggles, their life story. But they would surely not get the feeling that we "know them" or that we "get them", because that's something they would have to forge together with us, by priming us the right way, or by providing us with their raw, unfiltered thoughts in a dialogue. To truly know someone is to forge a bond with them — to me, no one is known alone, we are all known to each other. I don't think google (or apple, or whomever) can do that without it being born out of a two-way street (user and LLM)[1]. Especially if we then take into account the aforementioned issue that we evolve, our beliefs change, how we feel about the past changes, and others.
[1] But — and I guess sort of contradicting myself — Google could certainly try to grab all my data and forge that conversation and connection. Prompt me with questions about things, and so on. Like a therapist who has suddenly come into possession of all our diaries and whom we slowly, but surely, open up to. Google could definitely intelligently go from the information to the feeling of connection.
Maybe. I haven't really heard many of the people in my circles describing an experience like that ("opening up" to an LLM). I can't imagine *anyone* telling a general-purpose LLM about memories they cherish.
Do people want an LLM to "know them"? I literally shuddered at the thought. That sounds like a dystopian hell to me.
But I think Google has, or can infer, a lot more of that data than people realize. If you're on Android you're probably opted into Google Photos, and they can mine a ton of context about you out of there. Certainly infer information about who is important to you, even if you don't realize it yourself. And let's face it, people aren't that unique. It doesn't take much pattern matching to come up with text that looks insightful and deep, but is actually superficial. Look at cold-reading psychics for examples of how trivial it is.