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It doesn't solve any problem, you can just search your files using your prefered file explorer (crtl-f) I'd assume most people organise their files so that the

by dmbche 2y ago

It doesn't solve any problem, you can just search your files using your prefered file explorer (crtl-f) I'd assume most people organise their files so that they know where things are as well.

whatever1 2y ago
But file explorer does not read the actual files and build context. Even for pure text files that sometimes search functions can also access, I need to remember exactly the string of characters I am looking for. I was hoping an LLM would have a context of all of my content (text and visual) and for the first time use my computers data as a knowledge base. Queries like “what was my design file for that x service” ? Today it’s impossible to answer unless you have organized your data your self. Why do we still have to organize our data manually?
- pests 2y ago
  The photos apps do this well now. Can search Apple/Google photos with questions about the content of images and videos and get useful results.
nine_k 2y ago
> you can just search your files using your prefered file explorer This only work if you remember specific substrings. An LLM (or some other language model) can summarize and interpolate. It can be asked to find that file that mentions a transaction for buying candy, and it has a fair chance to find it, even if none of the words "transaction", "buying" or "candy" are present in the file, e.g. it says "shelled out $17 for a huge pack of gobstoppers". > I'd assume most people organise their files You'll be shocked, but...
- ozim 2y ago
  I think the same, people are not organized - even with things that make them money and being organized could earn them much more.
- dmbche 2y ago
  But isn't that candy example non-sensical? In what situation do you need some information without any of the context(or without knowing any of the context)? i really believe that this is not an actual problem in need of solving, but instead creating a tool (personal ai assistant) and trying to find a usecase Edit0: note to self, rambling - assuming there exist valuable information that one needa to access in their files, but one doesn't know where it is, when it was made, it's name or other information about it(as you could find said file right away with this information). Say you need an information for some documentation like the C standard - you need precise information on some process. Is it not much simpler to just open the doc and use the index? Then again for you to be aeare of the C standard makes the query useless. If it's from something less well organised, say you want letters you wrote to your significant other, maybe the assistant could help. But then again, what are you asking? How hard is it to keep your letters in a folder? Or even simply know what you've done (I surely can't imagine forgetting things I've created but somehow finding use in a llm that finds it for me). Like asking it "what is my opinion on x" or "what's a good compliment I wrote" is nonsensical to me, but asking it about external ressources makes the idea of training it on your own data pointless. "How did I write X API" - just open your file, no? You know where it is, you made it. Like saying "get me that picture of unle tony in Florida" might save you 10 seconds instead of going into your files and thinking about when you got that picture, but it's not solving a real issue or making things more efficient. (Edit1: if you don't know Tony, when you got the picture or of what it's a picture of, why are you querying? What's the usecase for this information, is it just to prove it can be done? It feels like the user needs to contorts themselves in a small niche for this product to be useful) Either it's used for non valuable work (menial search) or you already know how to get the answer you need. I cannot imagine a query that would be useful compared to simply being aware of what's in your computer. And if you're not aware of it, how do you search for it?
  - mjlee 2y ago
    I think your brain may just work differently to mine, and I don't think I'm unique. > "get me that picture of unle tony in Florida" might save you 10 seconds instead of going into your files and thinking about when you got that picture I don't have a memory for time, and I can't picture things in my mind. Thinking about when I took a picture does nothing for me, I could be out by years. Having some unified natural language search engine would be amazing for me. I might remember it was a sunny day and that we got ice cream, and that's what I want to search on. The "small niche" use case for me is often my daughter wants to see a photo of a family member I'm talking about, or I want to remember some other aspect of the day and the photo triggers that for me.
ozim 2y ago
I think you are really wrong. Most people I see at work and outside don’t care and they want stupid machine to deal with it. That is why smartphones and tablets move away from providing „file system” access. It is super annoying for me but most people want to save their tax form or their baby photo not even understanding each is different file type - because they couldn’t care less about file types let alone making folder structure to keep them organized.
acchow 2y ago
Curiously, the things I search most often are not located in files: calendar, photo content/location, email, ChatGPT history, Spotify library, iMessage/whatsapp history, contacts, notes, Amazon order history

by dmbche 2y ago

It doesn't solve any problem, you can just search your files using your prefered file explorer (crtl-f) I'd assume most people organise their files so that they know where things are as well.

whatever1 2y ago

But file explorer does not read the actual files and build context. Even for pure text files that sometimes search functions can also access, I need to remember exactly the string of characters I am looking for. I was hoping an LLM would have a context of all of my content (text and visual) and for the first time use my computers data as a knowledge base. Queries like “what was my design file for that x service” ? Today it’s impossible to answer unless you have organized your data your self. Why do we still have to organize our data manually?

pests 2y ago
The photos apps do this well now. Can search Apple/Google photos with questions about the content of images and videos and get useful results.

nine_k 2y ago

> you can just search your files using your prefered file explorer This only work if you remember specific substrings. An LLM (or some other language model) can summarize and interpolate. It can be asked to find that file that mentions a transaction for buying candy, and it has a fair chance to find it, even if none of the words "transaction", "buying" or "candy" are present in the file, e.g. it says "shelled out $17 for a huge pack of gobstoppers". > I'd assume most people organise their files You'll be shocked, but...

ozim 2y ago
I think the same, people are not organized - even with things that make them money and being organized could earn them much more.
dmbche 2y ago
But isn't that candy example non-sensical? In what situation do you need some information without any of the context(or without knowing any of the context)? i really believe that this is not an actual problem in need of solving, but instead creating a tool (personal ai assistant) and trying to find a usecase Edit0: note to self, rambling - assuming there exist valuable information that one needa to access in their files, but one doesn't know where it is, when it was made, it's name or other information about it(as you could find said file right away with this information). Say you need an information for some documentation like the C standard - you need precise information on some process. Is it not much simpler to just open the doc and use the index? Then again for you to be aeare of the C standard makes the query useless. If it's from something less well organised, say you want letters you wrote to your significant other, maybe the assistant could help. But then again, what are you asking? How hard is it to keep your letters in a folder? Or even simply know what you've done (I surely can't imagine forgetting things I've created but somehow finding use in a llm that finds it for me). Like asking it "what is my opinion on x" or "what's a good compliment I wrote" is nonsensical to me, but asking it about external ressources makes the idea of training it on your own data pointless. "How did I write X API" - just open your file, no? You know where it is, you made it. Like saying "get me that picture of unle tony in Florida" might save you 10 seconds instead of going into your files and thinking about when you got that picture, but it's not solving a real issue or making things more efficient. (Edit1: if you don't know Tony, when you got the picture or of what it's a picture of, why are you querying? What's the usecase for this information, is it just to prove it can be done? It feels like the user needs to contorts themselves in a small niche for this product to be useful) Either it's used for non valuable work (menial search) or you already know how to get the answer you need. I cannot imagine a query that would be useful compared to simply being aware of what's in your computer. And if you're not aware of it, how do you search for it?
- mjlee 2y ago
  I think your brain may just work differently to mine, and I don't think I'm unique. > "get me that picture of unle tony in Florida" might save you 10 seconds instead of going into your files and thinking about when you got that picture I don't have a memory for time, and I can't picture things in my mind. Thinking about when I took a picture does nothing for me, I could be out by years. Having some unified natural language search engine would be amazing for me. I might remember it was a sunny day and that we got ice cream, and that's what I want to search on. The "small niche" use case for me is often my daughter wants to see a photo of a family member I'm talking about, or I want to remember some other aspect of the day and the photo triggers that for me.

ozim 2y ago

I think you are really wrong. Most people I see at work and outside don’t care and they want stupid machine to deal with it. That is why smartphones and tablets move away from providing „file system” access. It is super annoying for me but most people want to save their tax form or their baby photo not even understanding each is different file type - because they couldn’t care less about file types let alone making folder structure to keep them organized.

acchow 2y ago

Curiously, the things I search most often are not located in files: calendar, photo content/location, email, ChatGPT history, Spotify library, iMessage/whatsapp history, contacts, notes, Amazon order history