AI Platforms That Respect Privacy

AI is already deeply integrated into our daily digital activities, whether we realize it or not, but it's a double-edged sword: On the one hand it can skyrocket our productivity and skillset. On the other, there are often serious privacy concerns to using it.
Do you want to be able to use AI tools, without worrying that companies are collecting everything you're doing? In this video, I talk to two experts working on the privacy side of AI. We discuss the privacy risks of using AI, and how to protect ourselves -- exploring some of the most private platforms and looking at best practices.

00:00 AI is Changing the World
01:29 Privacy Risks
06:09 Solutions
07:36 Brave Leo
18:22 Risks and Best Practices
22:10 Are you a priv/acc?

Especially in an age of AI, we need to be more mindful than ever of the consequences of leaking all of our data in online interactions. Luckily there are plenty of ways we can better protect our privacy. Including by making privacy-conscious choices when we use AI tools themselves. Caring about privacy doesn’t mean we have to give up modern technology. Even privacy-conscious people can enjoy AI tools in their lives!

Brought to you by NBTV team members: Lee Rennie, Cube Boy, Sam Ettaro, Will Sandoval, Reuben Yap, and Naomi Brockwell, with a special thanks to The Hated One

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Our eBook "Beginner's Introduction To Privacy:

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Watch this video on Odysee:
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Here are a bunch of products I like and use. Using these links helps support the channel and future videos!

Recommended Books:

Beginner's Introduction To Privacy - Naomi Brockwell

Permanent Record - Edward Snowden

What has the government done to our money - Rothbard

Extreme Privacy - Michael Bazzel (The best privacy book I've ever read)

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State - Glenn Greenwald

Some of my favorite products to help protect your privacy!

Faraday bag (signal stopping, to protect your fob, credit card, computer, and phone)

Data Blocker (if you're charging your phone in an unknown port, use this so that no data is transferred)

Camera tape (electrical tape is the best tape for covering phone and computer cameras)

USB-C to ethernet adapter:

Privacy Screens (use your phone and computer in public? Keep your information safe!)

Computer: (Search for the size right for your computer)

Phone: (Search for the size for your phone, decide whether you want glass or plastic!)

[snyderkr]

Very good to see this video. Privacy is increasingly a concern, especially since they've now started arresting CEOs to get them to "voluntarily" "cooperate" with Big Brother. And to those who say, "You have nothing to be concerned about if you have nothing to hide, " I reply, "Your naïvete is adorable."

[IveLearnedSomeThings]

The Leo summaries for Brave search are great. It also shows which articles it got each part of the answer from.

[jbrock]

Good video, I have a lot of concerns about AI and your work here helps me start to crystallize how I want to think about AI going forward. But I REALLY appreciate your priv/acc segment at the end, I do feel like a bit of a nutter sometimes when I try to convince my family not to share passwords over SMS text or share tons of information online. It is really nice to know that there are other weirdos like me out there. Josh Summers at All Things Secured has been similarly helpful. Thanks Naomi!

[chrisharrison]

Prfect timing as I've been concerned more and more about this issue - Amazing! Thank you.

[DokterWho]

I agree, but find it hard to use them, I often get annoyed when I use them. I hope they will get truly competitive soon. We need this!

[WorldT]

good to know and yes people seem to not take their privacy seriously enough on so many things,

[lIII]

Would love to see a vid on how to have a private real physical address (where you do not live), not PO Box or equivalent. Ty! ❤

[musiqtee]

I agree, but still prefer to run inference locally (as a service) on fairly janky hardware. So, this comment points to the next video… 🙈😅

I run my instance(s) as VMs on a separate network (several options) that can’t reach the internet, or the rest of my LAN. I can use it through one of several interfaces, some are “familiar” and run in a browser. RAG (feeding a model my own data) is also possible, nothing leaves the LAN.

No “company” involved, as they seem to change owners (and ethics) beyond my influence. The community is great at sharing knowledge, and growing.

One huge ethical issue remains, as every LLM is trained before local deployment. Even the open source models are not too transparent as to what data was used, when or to what conditions.

Different topic, huge deal… Thanks as always for sharing grounded knowledge! 👍

[marktwain]

Wow! This is a very interesting turn of events. Thank you so much for this post.

[JacquesDupuis]

Very interesting, thank you. I have now installed Brave. Thank you.

[jacksteal]

What we really need is a video about AI on phones as they become more and more common, especially with Apple fast approaching iOS 18.1

[VertegrezNox]

For LLMs would be nice to get info about training them locally, using RAG, "newer" features such as Reflection.. function calling, or using them (locally) to write & work on coding projects..

[WickedMuis]

Nice that there are privacy focused AIs now!

Regarding the shop: would be cool if you'd have zip-up hoodies of more than one design on there as well!

[RomonaFoster]

Sorry. Venice's icon looks too scary. I'm sticking with Brave. LOL!

I'm going to test some AI content on there today. So glad this video popped up in my feed.

[garydeluce]

I see so much about Brave. Naomi, do you have concerns with Peter Thiel's involvement with Brave? The dude is a ground floor investor while running Palantir.

[cx]

AI years ago was called 'Expert Systems". These expert systems has a singular database and you would submit a query to have it search the data.
Today with the MASSIVE amount of data, we need a better way to get through that data, so AI is here.
Let AI do the searching help.

[greganovak]

Thank you, thank you, thank you 👍 Just the info I was looking for... So important topic.

[harveybc]

What I don't understand is why someone would have a conversation with AI as if they are chatting with a friend. AI is a fantastic tool for doing searches on science and tech things. Have a math question, it saves a lot of research time.
What I worry about the the devices with microphones, such as your phone and those Alexia type things. Are they ease dropping? I strongly suspect the answer to that is a resounding yes.
BTW: I use Brave and have been seeing the ask Leo. Didn't know what it was. I'm going to have to give it a try. That information alone made watching this worth it.

[electricalbatross]

What about Ollama? I've been using it for offline AI on my laptop (modest 8GB Ram 11th gen intel).

[nommindymple]

Since you mentioned Brave having an AI built in, I opened my Anonymous instance of Brave (everything deleted when I close that instance) and asked it what I've been doing recently on the internet. It came back with 7 things. Every one of them was wrong. Of course, it shouldn't have been able to find anything about me since I never enter anything private in that browser instance and everything's deleted at the end of the session. But, still, it pulled 7 wrong things out of it's hat and claimed they were facts.