3 ms·
> Do you feel that local Microsoft AI offerings will not be a meaningful part of collecting user data? This ultimately depends on how Microsoft implements the
by tentacleuno 3y ago
> Do you feel that local Microsoft AI offerings will not be a meaningful part of collecting user data?
This ultimately depends on how Microsoft implements the AI -- if they use well-understood techniques such as federated learning[0] and differential privacy[1], there's a strong chance for Microsoft to offer useful features without the user sacrificing privacy.
Of course, the elephant in the room is that, since 10, privacy on Windows has taken a nosedive. I'm really not sure if they'd even want to spend the R&D work on doing things The Right Way.
> Or if you allow that they could, do you believe that MS will be steadfast in not sharing it?
There are good techniques for ensuring local AI (or "on-device AI"?) is private as of now, so I'm not sure.
EDIT: (Rising to yours, too!)
> Let's say you found a local MS AI product in front of you. Do you have confidence it would not be a meaningful part of collecting user data?
With the history of privacy on Windows, I would be very hesitant that it would preserve privacy without doing some serious in-depth analysis on it, to be honest.
[0]: https://federated.withgoogle.com/#top https://federated.withgoogle.com/#top
[0.1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_learning
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy
- WarOnPrivacy 3y agoOh hey. Look what I found on page 2. Intel, Microsoft discuss plans to run Copilot locally on PCs instead of in the cloud Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39852166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39852166
- tentacleuno 3y agoOh yeah! I totally forgot about Intel's on-chip AI acceleration[1]. I'm not sure how well it works, but I know that it exists and nothing major is currently taking advantage of it AFAIK. Local Copilot sounds interesting, but I'd imagine it would be akin to the old Siri on iPhones where its use would be limited to controlling on-device settings. I've heard and read quite a lot about the dangers of that, though: with prompt injections being an issue with Copilot[0] (and Bing Chat frequently going crazy[2]), I can understand why Microsoft are very hesitant to give it any real control over the system. [0]: https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2024/whoami-conditional-prompt-injection-instructions/ https://embracethered.com/blog/posts/2024/whoami-conditional... [0.1]: https://kai-greshake.de/posts/llm-malware/ https://kai-greshake.de/posts/llm-malware/ [1]: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-details-meteor-lakes-ai-acceleration-for-pcs-vpu-unit https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-details-meteor-lakes... [1.1]: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/intel-announces-an-integrated-neural-ai-accelerator-in-meteor-lake https://www.extremetech.com/computing/intel-announces-an-int... (hard to find a good explanation of these accelerators) [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/02/16/bing-chatbots-unhinged-responses-going-viral/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2023/02/16/bing-ch...