9 ms·

ChatGPT users can now turn off chat history

86 points by zerojames 3y ago

huijzer 3y ago
I always wonder how much I can trust settings like this, but this definitely looks like a step in a good direction!
- nr2x 3y ago
  Well, the FTC has already made companies delete models which relied on deceptive trade practices to acquire data. So if they offer the setting and then ignore it, they could literally be forced to delete their model. Overall if you trust them to hire lawyers who understand that, and plan accordingly, you can trust the setting.
nickthegreek 3y ago
As a paying user, I wish the toggles were decoupled. For free users, I understand the lack of control. If you want to not have your conversations used in training, you also have to turn off chat history. Or I wish they would allow a toggle on a per chat basis, not on every chat. Step in the right direction though.
- runnerup 3y ago
  I think it’s aimed to be a dummy-proof version of “it’s okay to use chatGPT for proprietary code help because no one will be able to see that I did it, and it wont end up being regurgitated to someone else ten years from now.” If the controls were more granular people would screw it up leading to another round of news stories like the “Samsung leak” one
satellite2 3y ago
Why bundle history and training in the same setting? Most users would probably want to keep history but not allow training on it.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  I assume because it's a hassle for them. I've noticed that when busy they have issues with chat history right now. It could also be tightly coupled and just a pain to remove right now. We have no idea how the app was built.
- mattnewton 3y ago
  I think you have answered your own question. Somewhat more charitably though it could be that it’s far easier to ensure you never train on something you don’t store.
- user-one1 3y ago
  You just answered yourself: so people will keep the history on and they can keep training on the data.
- adventured 3y ago
  Expediency. Perhaps they'll separate the two later on, because this is the fastest way to get to some easy user control right now. They're in a hurry to make this available while GPT is blowing up in usage/popularity with the public, to help reduce the blowback on privacy. The US Congress for example just purchased a bunch of licenses to start messing with ChatGPT at their offices.
- thewataccount 3y ago
  My hope is that if they aren't showing us the history then they literally aren't keeping it _at all_ (though they might keep it 30 days still for LE?). That's probably just a dream and they just want to push you into keeping it on while they keep it for later just in case? On the bright side this can be fixed with a client side extension :D
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  Beyond being a dark pattern, it's far easier to build a product that simply doesn't save things that could cause trouble. You can't have someone "accidentally" use a set of data if that data never exists. You can't have another integration accidentally fail to filter out "bad data" if it doesn't exist. I've used this pattern in a few side projects. I never, ever have to worry about accidentally storing/moving/integrating data that doesn't exist.
encodedrose 3y ago
"Conversations that are started when chat history is disabled won’t be used to train and improve our models, and won’t appear in the history sidebar" A huge step in the right direction to no longer have to use the API to get around training the underlying models -- including ChatGPT4.
yewenjie 3y ago
Wait, were they using the data for training models? I thought that was the case in the first beta for gpt-3.5 long ago (sigh December 2022 feels like ages ago). Also, are they training something like GPT-5 or just continuously improving GPT-4?
- nr2x 3y ago
  It seems they are refining 4 more than planning a 5 based on different interviews. I’m not sure if it matters though, could just be a branding issue more than anything.
  - unsupp0rted 3y ago
    Agreed. I doubt they're allowed to say out loud that they're releasing 5 soon and it'll be as much a step up as 4 was compared to 3.5. They can call it 4.1 but that won't change the outcome.
    - lanstin 3y ago
      they are actively saying 4 represents hitting a limit point for the current models, and that further progress needs different model structure not just more size and training compute. a lot of people are hopeful for the fine tuning but i am sceptical that qualitatively better thinking will happen thru fine tuning, but we'll see
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fifteen1506 3y ago
OT: Tried to use my paid account earlier today with no success -- login process got stuck in infinite loading. Anyone else affected?
- tomashubelbauer 3y ago
  Try clicking on Sign Up and then logging in again. There's a thread named Invalid Authorization Code in the OpenAI community forums and this tip from there helped me solve this same issue 4 hours ago.
- vorticalbox 3y ago
  https://status.openai.com/incidents/cs8fghhddc5s https://status.openai.com/incidents/cs8fghhddc5s
nr2x 3y ago
I don’t think people appreciate what a sea change it is to have a major new technology launch with a subscription model and no ads. Google hasn’t figured out how to make money outside of ads which is what’s been keeping them running in circles. OpenAI is just going with the radical idea of charging people money for a valuable time-saving service. Meanwhile while Meta and Google flounder Apple just keeps selling premium devices at a premium price and hasn’t laid off anybody. The age of adtech is closing and the world is better for it.
- endisneigh 3y ago
  > The age of adtech is closing and the world is better for it. YouTube Premium exists and plenty of people still use adblock, or nothing at all. Most people are not going to pay for a subscription. As for your other point, SaaS is a thing and has been for over a decade... If anything I'd say ChatGPT is the beginning of next-gen adtech.
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    > If anything I'd say ChatGPT is the beginning of next-gen adtech. You're 100% right, and people are gonna hate to hear it. It's like getting people to drink cough medicine. 2 decades ago, we were naive enough to wonder what online video streaming would look like. Now it's an ad-fuelled treadmill that has more promotional content than candid, sincere videos. We were also dumb enough to imagine online search indexing, same problem. Even your app store is not safe from being weaponized. It's a sad pattern that is 100% fueled by the desperate profit-seeking of shareholders, and sustained by the free market in general.
    - nr2x 3y ago
      I’ve got receipts from HBO, Amazon, Disney, Netflix, Curiosity Stream, and YouTube Premium that prove that wrong.
      - smoldesu 3y ago
        Precisely to the point I made elsewhere in this thread: > Just don't pretend that you're funding a better world by buying the premium product - it's a bigger trick than advertisement itself. [0] I'm not going to play the "media companies are the bad guys" card, but they are rent collectors. All of them do this - they take your money, and then keep squeezing. The only way to avoid being manipulated is to not play the game in the first place. You still can (and should) fund the artists and creators you're fond of. The moment you agree to terms or a contract though, you've been made a business bitch. OpenAI is no different than the rest of them. Their Faustian bargain is worded a little differently, and the flowers on the table are a different color, but it's still the same shitshow. As a reminder, YouTube also launched without ads. Just you wait, the squeeze is coming. I guarantee it! [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35706083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35706083
jansenmac 3y ago
Note that OpenAI is under pressure from the EU to do something about using user data. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/19/1071789/openais-hunger-for-data-is-coming-back-to-bite-it/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/19/1071789/openais-...
- nr2x 3y ago
  The EU is so laughably ineffective and slow that I have no doubt OpenAi could do another 50 gpt-4 sized training runs with PII-pruned data before anything gets to court. You already are seeing the likes of Adobe using legally-sourced imagery as a key selling point. I imagine the bigger momentum is going to come from companies who want to know what liabilities they have for using the tools.
  - ajvs 3y ago
    Italy already banned ChatGPT, and Germany is considering the same. Whilst the EU itself taking a hard stance I agree will take a while, just the fact that EU member states are banning it is forcing OpenAI to take a privacy-preserving stance to prevent regulation on themselves occurring as quickly.
    - adventured 3y ago
      That they moved to ban as a first step is indicative of their regressive mindset on technology broadly. It properly encompasses why Germany is so backwards when it comes to tech and has so few leaders in the field, while supposedly being an industrial and economic superpower. They're way too slow, they're too dogmatic. The approach doesn't work and it indicates a lot of bad thinking regarding new tech. Which explains why SAP is one of the biggest technology companies in Europe, and they're small compared to the US giants now. Case in point: Salesforce sales 2020: $17b; SAP sales 2020: $27b. Salesforce sales last four quarters: $31b; SAP sales last four quarters: $30.8b. Microsoft can unleash a hundred billion dollars of capital investment at AI. Which companies in Europe can and will do that? None. Instead you'll get Macron touting a $30 billion government collaboration program on AI, which will take ten years to get anywhere, and will accomplish nothing in the end. There are few areas of tech that Europe isn't left in the dust by the US and China. The US is still the world's pre-eminent superpower and it fully intends to aggressively utilize AI to keep its advantages (and it will, just as it did with each era of tech). There's nothing EU bans will do to stop that, it merely provides further advantage to the US as it battles to dominate AI. The giant cloud leaders will have a huge advantage to begin with, so Europe is starting off in a bad way regardless.
tmaly 3y ago
It's hard to regain trust once you loose it.
hospitalJail 3y ago
>before permanently deleting. I don't believe this. I wouldn't believe this from my parents, my wife, my best friend. Data is too valuable. It might not be used for ad purposes, but between training and legal purposes, I don't see data being deleted. This is found on a PR page, not a legal document.
- aldarisbm 3y ago
  legit question, wouldn't they legally get in trouble if they don't?
SkyPuncher 3y ago
If there's anyone here from OpenAI, I'd really appreciate the ability to "print/export/screenshot" the current conversation better. I find it very frustrating to work through a long conversation with ChatGPT, then be stuck either: * Copy/Pasting individual messages * Printing - but only the current page ---- It doesn't need to be fancy. I just want a way to capture the entire transcript for easy reference in other documents.
- atlex2 3y ago
  I’ve gotten around this when I need by deleting the viewport containing the headers and moving out the large chat div, then I use one of the debug screen cap commands built into chrome on that div to save a giant tall image. Kinda bad, they should eventually just make print specific css.
- wadadadad 3y ago
  As pure text, I've had success using the following code to be copied in the developer tools: output = ""; document.querySelectorAll("main .flex-1.overflow-hidden .group").forEach(el => output = output + el.textContent); output;
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  removing all CSS rules on the chat window DOM node and its ancestors that say either overflow: ...; or height: 100%; works for me
qwertox 3y ago
Asking as a Plus user: Why can't I toggle them separately?
- tyfon 3y ago
  Because they want your data, it is a dark pattern. Also when you disable chat history / data collection they display a big box on the left side about "do you really want to do this" and a big green button to enable it again. There is no button to disable it in the same way, you have to dig into the settings. Basically they were forced by the EU and using dark patterns to make you not disable it as the data you provide is very valuable for them. Edit: You also have to enable this setting on every device you work on, it is not stored on the "account"..
atlex2 3y ago
The 3.5 prompt/model should probably be updated to inform users of their privacy more accurately. > Me: is our conversation confidential? > 3.5: As an AI language model, I do not have the ability to store or share any information discussed during our conversation. > 4: As an AI language model, I am designed to maintain user privacy and do not store the content of our conversations. However, it's important to remember that I am a software, and your data might be stored by the platform you are using to access me.
nzach 3y ago
According to this FAQ[0] you can request for your data to not be used in training. In the FAQ they state: "Once you submit the form, new conversations will not be used to train our models". This[1] is the link to the request form. [0] - https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-faq https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-fa... [1] - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrnC-_A7JFs4LbIuzevQ_78hVERlNqqCPCt3d8XqnKOfdRdQ/viewform https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrnC-_A7JFs4LbIuze...

86 points by zerojames 3y ago

huijzer 3y ago

I always wonder how much I can trust settings like this, but this definitely looks like a step in a good direction!

nr2x 3y ago
Well, the FTC has already made companies delete models which relied on deceptive trade practices to acquire data. So if they offer the setting and then ignore it, they could literally be forced to delete their model. Overall if you trust them to hire lawyers who understand that, and plan accordingly, you can trust the setting.

nickthegreek 3y ago

As a paying user, I wish the toggles were decoupled. For free users, I understand the lack of control. If you want to not have your conversations used in training, you also have to turn off chat history. Or I wish they would allow a toggle on a per chat basis, not on every chat. Step in the right direction though.

runnerup 3y ago
I think it’s aimed to be a dummy-proof version of “it’s okay to use chatGPT for proprietary code help because no one will be able to see that I did it, and it wont end up being regurgitated to someone else ten years from now.” If the controls were more granular people would screw it up leading to another round of news stories like the “Samsung leak” one

satellite2 3y ago

Why bundle history and training in the same setting? Most users would probably want to keep history but not allow training on it.

nemo44x 3y ago
I assume because it's a hassle for them. I've noticed that when busy they have issues with chat history right now. It could also be tightly coupled and just a pain to remove right now. We have no idea how the app was built.
mattnewton 3y ago
I think you have answered your own question. Somewhat more charitably though it could be that it’s far easier to ensure you never train on something you don’t store.
user-one1 3y ago
You just answered yourself: so people will keep the history on and they can keep training on the data.
adventured 3y ago
Expediency. Perhaps they'll separate the two later on, because this is the fastest way to get to some easy user control right now. They're in a hurry to make this available while GPT is blowing up in usage/popularity with the public, to help reduce the blowback on privacy. The US Congress for example just purchased a bunch of licenses to start messing with ChatGPT at their offices.
thewataccount 3y ago
My hope is that if they aren't showing us the history then they literally aren't keeping it _at all_ (though they might keep it 30 days still for LE?). That's probably just a dream and they just want to push you into keeping it on while they keep it for later just in case? On the bright side this can be fixed with a client side extension :D
SkyPuncher 3y ago
Beyond being a dark pattern, it's far easier to build a product that simply doesn't save things that could cause trouble. You can't have someone "accidentally" use a set of data if that data never exists. You can't have another integration accidentally fail to filter out "bad data" if it doesn't exist. I've used this pattern in a few side projects. I never, ever have to worry about accidentally storing/moving/integrating data that doesn't exist.

encodedrose 3y ago

"Conversations that are started when chat history is disabled won’t be used to train and improve our models, and won’t appear in the history sidebar" A huge step in the right direction to no longer have to use the API to get around training the underlying models -- including ChatGPT4.

yewenjie 3y ago

Wait, were they using the data for training models? I thought that was the case in the first beta for gpt-3.5 long ago (sigh December 2022 feels like ages ago). Also, are they training something like GPT-5 or just continuously improving GPT-4?

nr2x 3y ago
It seems they are refining 4 more than planning a 5 based on different interviews. I’m not sure if it matters though, could just be a branding issue more than anything.
- unsupp0rted 3y ago
  Agreed. I doubt they're allowed to say out loud that they're releasing 5 soon and it'll be as much a step up as 4 was compared to 3.5. They can call it 4.1 but that won't change the outcome.
  - lanstin 3y ago
    they are actively saying 4 represents hitting a limit point for the current models, and that further progress needs different model structure not just more size and training compute. a lot of people are hopeful for the fine tuning but i am sceptical that qualitatively better thinking will happen thru fine tuning, but we'll see

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fifteen1506 3y ago

OT: Tried to use my paid account earlier today with no success -- login process got stuck in infinite loading. Anyone else affected?

tomashubelbauer 3y ago
Try clicking on Sign Up and then logging in again. There's a thread named Invalid Authorization Code in the OpenAI community forums and this tip from there helped me solve this same issue 4 hours ago.
vorticalbox 3y ago
https://status.openai.com/incidents/cs8fghhddc5s https://status.openai.com/incidents/cs8fghhddc5s

nr2x 3y ago

I don’t think people appreciate what a sea change it is to have a major new technology launch with a subscription model and no ads. Google hasn’t figured out how to make money outside of ads which is what’s been keeping them running in circles. OpenAI is just going with the radical idea of charging people money for a valuable time-saving service. Meanwhile while Meta and Google flounder Apple just keeps selling premium devices at a premium price and hasn’t laid off anybody. The age of adtech is closing and the world is better for it.

endisneigh 3y ago
> The age of adtech is closing and the world is better for it. YouTube Premium exists and plenty of people still use adblock, or nothing at all. Most people are not going to pay for a subscription. As for your other point, SaaS is a thing and has been for over a decade... If anything I'd say ChatGPT is the beginning of next-gen adtech.
- smoldesu 3y ago
  > If anything I'd say ChatGPT is the beginning of next-gen adtech. You're 100% right, and people are gonna hate to hear it. It's like getting people to drink cough medicine. 2 decades ago, we were naive enough to wonder what online video streaming would look like. Now it's an ad-fuelled treadmill that has more promotional content than candid, sincere videos. We were also dumb enough to imagine online search indexing, same problem. Even your app store is not safe from being weaponized. It's a sad pattern that is 100% fueled by the desperate profit-seeking of shareholders, and sustained by the free market in general.
  - nr2x 3y ago
    I’ve got receipts from HBO, Amazon, Disney, Netflix, Curiosity Stream, and YouTube Premium that prove that wrong.
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      Precisely to the point I made elsewhere in this thread: > Just don't pretend that you're funding a better world by buying the premium product - it's a bigger trick than advertisement itself. [0] I'm not going to play the "media companies are the bad guys" card, but they are rent collectors. All of them do this - they take your money, and then keep squeezing. The only way to avoid being manipulated is to not play the game in the first place. You still can (and should) fund the artists and creators you're fond of. The moment you agree to terms or a contract though, you've been made a business bitch. OpenAI is no different than the rest of them. Their Faustian bargain is worded a little differently, and the flowers on the table are a different color, but it's still the same shitshow. As a reminder, YouTube also launched without ads. Just you wait, the squeeze is coming. I guarantee it! [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35706083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35706083

jansenmac 3y ago

Note that OpenAI is under pressure from the EU to do something about using user data. https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/19/1071789/openais-hunger-for-data-is-coming-back-to-bite-it/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/19/1071789/openais-...

nr2x 3y ago
The EU is so laughably ineffective and slow that I have no doubt OpenAi could do another 50 gpt-4 sized training runs with PII-pruned data before anything gets to court. You already are seeing the likes of Adobe using legally-sourced imagery as a key selling point. I imagine the bigger momentum is going to come from companies who want to know what liabilities they have for using the tools.
- ajvs 3y ago
  Italy already banned ChatGPT, and Germany is considering the same. Whilst the EU itself taking a hard stance I agree will take a while, just the fact that EU member states are banning it is forcing OpenAI to take a privacy-preserving stance to prevent regulation on themselves occurring as quickly.
  - adventured 3y ago
    That they moved to ban as a first step is indicative of their regressive mindset on technology broadly. It properly encompasses why Germany is so backwards when it comes to tech and has so few leaders in the field, while supposedly being an industrial and economic superpower. They're way too slow, they're too dogmatic. The approach doesn't work and it indicates a lot of bad thinking regarding new tech. Which explains why SAP is one of the biggest technology companies in Europe, and they're small compared to the US giants now. Case in point: Salesforce sales 2020: $17b; SAP sales 2020: $27b. Salesforce sales last four quarters: $31b; SAP sales last four quarters: $30.8b. Microsoft can unleash a hundred billion dollars of capital investment at AI. Which companies in Europe can and will do that? None. Instead you'll get Macron touting a $30 billion government collaboration program on AI, which will take ten years to get anywhere, and will accomplish nothing in the end. There are few areas of tech that Europe isn't left in the dust by the US and China. The US is still the world's pre-eminent superpower and it fully intends to aggressively utilize AI to keep its advantages (and it will, just as it did with each era of tech). There's nothing EU bans will do to stop that, it merely provides further advantage to the US as it battles to dominate AI. The giant cloud leaders will have a huge advantage to begin with, so Europe is starting off in a bad way regardless.

tmaly 3y ago

It's hard to regain trust once you loose it.

hospitalJail 3y ago

>before permanently deleting. I don't believe this. I wouldn't believe this from my parents, my wife, my best friend. Data is too valuable. It might not be used for ad purposes, but between training and legal purposes, I don't see data being deleted. This is found on a PR page, not a legal document.

aldarisbm 3y ago
legit question, wouldn't they legally get in trouble if they don't?

SkyPuncher 3y ago

If there's anyone here from OpenAI, I'd really appreciate the ability to "print/export/screenshot" the current conversation better. I find it very frustrating to work through a long conversation with ChatGPT, then be stuck either: * Copy/Pasting individual messages * Printing - but only the current page ---- It doesn't need to be fancy. I just want a way to capture the entire transcript for easy reference in other documents.

atlex2 3y ago
I’ve gotten around this when I need by deleting the viewport containing the headers and moving out the large chat div, then I use one of the debug screen cap commands built into chrome on that div to save a giant tall image. Kinda bad, they should eventually just make print specific css.
wadadadad 3y ago
As pure text, I've had success using the following code to be copied in the developer tools: output = ""; document.querySelectorAll("main .flex-1.overflow-hidden .group").forEach(el => output = output + el.textContent); output;
moritzwarhier 3y ago
removing all CSS rules on the chat window DOM node and its ancestors that say either overflow: ...; or height: 100%; works for me

qwertox 3y ago

Asking as a Plus user: Why can't I toggle them separately?

tyfon 3y ago
Because they want your data, it is a dark pattern. Also when you disable chat history / data collection they display a big box on the left side about "do you really want to do this" and a big green button to enable it again. There is no button to disable it in the same way, you have to dig into the settings. Basically they were forced by the EU and using dark patterns to make you not disable it as the data you provide is very valuable for them. Edit: You also have to enable this setting on every device you work on, it is not stored on the "account"..

atlex2 3y ago

The 3.5 prompt/model should probably be updated to inform users of their privacy more accurately. > Me: is our conversation confidential? > 3.5: As an AI language model, I do not have the ability to store or share any information discussed during our conversation. > 4: As an AI language model, I am designed to maintain user privacy and do not store the content of our conversations. However, it's important to remember that I am a software, and your data might be stored by the platform you are using to access me.

nzach 3y ago

According to this FAQ[0] you can request for your data to not be used in training. In the FAQ they state: "Once you submit the form, new conversations will not be used to train our models". This[1] is the link to the request form. [0] - https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-faq https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-fa... [1] - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrnC-_A7JFs4LbIuzevQ_78hVERlNqqCPCt3d8XqnKOfdRdQ/viewform https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrnC-_A7JFs4LbIuze...