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This is amazing. My entire web browser session state for every private and personal website I sign onto every day will be used for training data. It's great! I

This is amazing. My entire web browser session state for every private and personal website I sign onto every day will be used for training data. It's great! I love this. This is exactly the direction humans should be going in to not self-destruct. The future is looking bright, while the light in our brains dims to eventual darkness. Slowly. Tragically. And for what purpose exactly. So cool.

andrethegiant 1y ago
I have no plans in downloading Atlas either, but I think your browsing isn't used for training unless you opt in. > By default, we don’t use the content you browse to train our models. If you choose to opt-in this content, you can enable “include web browsing” in your data controls settings. Note, even if you opt into training, webpages that opt out of GPTBot, will not be trained on. https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-atlas/ https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-atlas/
- gtsop 1y ago
  [dead]
- McDyver 1y ago
  Until the next update, when they conveniently have a "bug" that enables it by default
  - drusepth 1y ago
    The classic Brave approach!
BrenBarn 1y ago
"You're absolutely right!"
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
isolay 1y ago
Seeing people work tirelessly to make The Matrix a reality is great. I can't wait!
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- baq 1y ago
  When I ask 20-somethings whether they’ve seen the matrix the answer is ‘no’ usually. They have little idea what they’re working towards, but are happy to be doing it so they have something to eat.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - yoz-y 1y ago
    Yet they have seen Black Mirror and the likes, which also portray the future we’re heading towards. I’d argue even better because matrix is still far off. But also, it’s not the 20-somethings building this people making decisions are in their 40’s and 50’s.
    - vulk 1y ago
      I haven't watched Black Mirror but Silo is the next best thing I've seen after Matrix and the scenario doesn't seems far off too.
      - the_af 1y ago
        I enjoyed Silo, but I think in the real world, completely destroying the world's ecosystem and a fraction of mankind surviving in tiny isolated bunkers for generations is more fantasy than scifi...
    - tinfoilhatter 1y ago
      The Matrix was inspired by the Gnostic schools of thought. The authors obviously knew loads about esoteric spirituality and the occult sciences. People have been suggesting that we are trapped in a simulacrum / matrix for over two-thousand years. I personally believe The Matrix was somewhat of a documentary. I'm curious - why do you think a concept such as presented in The Matrix, is still far off?
Terr_ 1y ago
Nobody likes the Torment Nexus [0] but everyone has to use it because that's all the eyeballs are. Sometimes still attached. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus
- MichaelZuo 1y ago
  Who gets to decide on the exact definition of a “Torment Nexus”? Presupposing whether everyone reading HN likes or dislkkes something not even agreed on yet seems silly.
  - burnte 1y ago
    > Who gets to decide on the exact definition of a “Torment Nexus”? It's a joke that is intentionally vague so that the reader could come up with their own definition. Hopefully no one tries to make one so we don't need to define it. > Presupposing whether everyone reading HN likes or dislkkes something not even agreed on yet seems silly. Jokes tend to be on the silly side.
    - MichaelZuo 1y ago
      A joke about… what? The thing not yet defined?
      - groby_b 1y ago
        Yes. It is, in fact, possible to make jokes about abstract concepts and fictional entities. At least until the Torment Nexus outlaws it.
      - burnte 1y ago
        Yep! Ever seen Pulp Fiction? Do you know what's in the briefcase? No one does. It's a McGuffin. The Torment Nexus is also a McGuffin, it's a poorly defined thing that the actual definition of is irrelevant to the plot, only how it creates motivation for the characters. In this joke the "Torment Nexus" by name is clearly something you don't want, no one wants to be tormented. It's also the McGuffin because something named a Torment Nexus would HOPEFULLY be something someone wouldn't build, but the joke is "hey this guy went and built the horrible thing we didn't want!" Ever heard anyone make a Soylent Green joke? Same thing. All we know is that "soylent green in people" but we don't know HOW it's people, but it doesn't matter because we simply don't want to eat people under any condition.
muzani 1y ago
Option 1: Training data Option 2: Ad data Option 3: None of the above I'm going with the first two because I like to contribute my data to help out a trillion dollar company that doesn't even have customer support :)
- falcor84 1y ago
  Option 3 is probably "engagement numbers go up -> investors happy"
  - georgefrowny 1y ago
    I think it's more like: investors permanently unhappy because they were promised ownership of God and now we're built out they're getting a few percent a year instead at best. Squeeze extra hard this quarter to get them off the Board's backs for another couple of months. Investors are never happy long term because even if you have a fantastic quarter, they'll throw a tantrum if you don't do it even better every single time.
espeed 1y ago
Knowing this is the direction things were headed, I have been trying to get Firefox and Google to create a feature that archives your browser history and pipes a stream of it in real time so that open-source personal AI engines can ingest it and index it. https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/archive-your-browser-history-and-pipe-a-stream-of-it-in-real/idi-p/103428 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/archive-your-browser-hi...
- block_dagger 1y ago
  Why not Chrome Devtools MCP?
  - whilenot-dev 1y ago
    I understand GP like they want to browse normally and have that session's history feed into another indexing process via some IPC like D-Bus. It's meant to receive human events from the browser. Chrome Devtools MCP on the other hand is a browser automation tool. Its purpose is to make it trivial to send programmed events/event-flows to a browser session.
- whilenot-dev 1y ago
  AFAICS this has nothing to do with "open-source personal AI engines". The recorded history is stored in a SQLite database and is quite trivial to examine[0][1]. A simple script could extract the information and feed them to your indexer of choice. Developing such a script isn't the task for an internet browser engineering team. The question remains whether the indexer would really benefit from real-time ingestion while browsing. [0] Firefox: https://www.foxtonforensics.com/browser-history-examiner/firefox-history-location https://www.foxtonforensics.com/browser-history-examiner/fir... [1] Chrome: https://www.foxtonforensics.com/browser-history-examiner/chrome-history-location https://www.foxtonforensics.com/browser-history-examiner/chr...
  - espeed 1y ago
    Due to the dynamic nature of the Web, URLs don't map to what you've seen. If I visit a URL at a certain time, the content I see is different than the content you see or even if I visit the same URL later. For example, if we want to know the tweets I'm seeing are the same as the tweets you're seeing and haven't been subtly modified by an AI, how do you do that? In the age of AI programming people, this will be important.
georgefrowny 1y ago
> and for what purpose exactly. The end goal for AI companies has always been to insert themselves into every data flow in the world.
- 0xAFFFF 1y ago
  They also need an outlet for all the garbage they generate, hence the transformation of Sora into a shitty social network.
- malfist 1y ago
  Why provide a service when there is rent to be extracted by being a middleman?
- Telemakhos 1y ago
  It's funny how AI companies and national intelligence agencies have the same goal, in the much the same way that it used to be funny that social networks got people to volunteer information about themselves publicly that previous generations would not admit to a state security service.
dmos62 1y ago
Hate to be the dum-dum, but what's leading to humanity's self-destruction here? Loss of privacy? Outsized corporate power? Or, is this an extreme mix of hyperbole and sarcasm?
- bayindirh 1y ago
  Creating an impermeable barrier between truth and real-time slop generation. How can you know what you're reading is true when you can't verify what's happening out there? This is true from global events to a pasta recipe.
  - dmos62 1y ago
    That's clearer. I can see how that can be a problem, but destruction of humanity? I think of this as a fun change in circumstance at best and a challenge at worst, rather than a disaster.
    - bayindirh 1y ago
      Consider a society where everyone has a different reality about something shared normally. Societies are built upon unspoken but shared truths and information (i.e. the social contract). Dissolve this information, dissolve or fragment the society. This, coupled with profiling and targeting will enable fragmentation of the societies, consolidation of power and many other shenanigans. This also enables continuous profiling, opening the door for "preemptive policing" (Minority Report style) and other dystopian things. Think about Cambridge Analytica or election manipulation, but on steroids. This is dangerous. Very dangerous.
      - artur_makly 1y ago
        This. Power and Control is only viable at scale when the aforementioned tacts are wielded with precision by "invisible hands" .. History has proved that keeping society stupid and disenfranchised is essential to control. Did you know that in the 1600s the King of England banned coffee? Simple.. fear of evolving propagating better ideas and more intense social fraternity. "Patrons read and debated the news of the day in coffeehouses, fueled by caffeine; the coffeehouse became a core engine of the new scientific and philosophical thought that characterized the era. Soon there were hundreds of establishments selling coffee." https://worldhistory.medium.com/why-the-king-of-england-banned-coffee-dce524b3e849 https://worldhistory.medium.com/why-the-king-of-england-bann...
meindnoch 1y ago
You're absolutely right!
- the_af 1y ago
  This is what the real Voight-Kampff test turned out to be :)
Mistletoe 1y ago
Hey now, don’t forget how they will just be able to hand over everything you’ve ever done to the government! We know no government or power would ever abuse that.
- worik 1y ago
  The government is not your biggest concern, (if you are not a brown skinned immigrant) * Insurence companies * Health insurers * Banks These all would like a chance to increase their profits at your expense based on your private data. Just because they will get it wrong 25% of the time will not mean positive profits for them... The government does not really care if you pay your taxes
deadbabe 1y ago
Personally I think it would be awesome if we could browse a 1999 version of the web. Better than the crap we have today, even if it is all just AI generated.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
  https://wiby.org/ https://wiby.org/
- jpfromlondon 11mo ago
  https://neocities.org/browse https://neocities.org/browse
giancarlostoro 1y ago
Perplexity released theirs earlier, and as far as I know, they do not use any of your data like that for training. It's really a shame if that's how OpenAI is using your data. I was going to try their coding solution, but now I'm just flat out blacklisting them and I'll stick to Claude. For whatever reason Claude Code just understands me fully.
- scrollop 1y ago
  Yes, luckily the Perplexity brwoser doesn't use your data for training, only: "Perplexity CEO says its browser will track everything users do online to sell ‘hyper personalized’ ads" https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-br... Burn them, burn them all to hell!
Esophagus4 1y ago
I recommend BrowserOS if you're looking for alternatives. Open-source agentic browser that uses any LLM provider (including local / Ollama). That being said... I tried it, and while it was fun and cool, I didn't get enough value out of it to use it regularly (I think this would go for any agentic browser).
TeMPOraL 1y ago
In all seriousness yes. Except maybe for the last 5 sentences. I fail to see the issue people have here. I mean, what exactly is the problem with training data here? This is not like advertising, where the data is used against you. It's not information about people that's being collected and extracted here - it's about collecting enough signal to identify patterns of thinking; it's about how human minds in general perceive the world. This is not going to hurt you. (LLMs ultimately might, when wielded by... the same parties that have been screwing you over for decades or more. It's not OpenAI that's screwing you over here - it's advertisers, marketers, news publishers, and others in the good ol' cohort of exploitative liars.)

andrethegiant 1y ago

I have no plans in downloading Atlas either, but I think your browsing isn't used for training unless you opt in. > By default, we don’t use the content you browse to train our models. If you choose to opt-in this content, you can enable “include web browsing” in your data controls settings. Note, even if you opt into training, webpages that opt out of GPTBot, will not be trained on. https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-atlas/ https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-atlas/

gtsop 1y ago
[dead]
McDyver 1y ago
Until the next update, when they conveniently have a "bug" that enables it by default
- drusepth 1y ago
  The classic Brave approach!

BrenBarn 1y ago

"You're absolutely right!"

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

isolay 1y ago

Seeing people work tirelessly to make The Matrix a reality is great. I can't wait!

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
baq 1y ago
When I ask 20-somethings whether they’ve seen the matrix the answer is ‘no’ usually. They have little idea what they’re working towards, but are happy to be doing it so they have something to eat.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- yoz-y 1y ago
  Yet they have seen Black Mirror and the likes, which also portray the future we’re heading towards. I’d argue even better because matrix is still far off. But also, it’s not the 20-somethings building this people making decisions are in their 40’s and 50’s.
  - vulk 1y ago
    I haven't watched Black Mirror but Silo is the next best thing I've seen after Matrix and the scenario doesn't seems far off too.
    - the_af 1y ago
      I enjoyed Silo, but I think in the real world, completely destroying the world's ecosystem and a fraction of mankind surviving in tiny isolated bunkers for generations is more fantasy than scifi...
  - tinfoilhatter 1y ago
    The Matrix was inspired by the Gnostic schools of thought. The authors obviously knew loads about esoteric spirituality and the occult sciences. People have been suggesting that we are trapped in a simulacrum / matrix for over two-thousand years. I personally believe The Matrix was somewhat of a documentary. I'm curious - why do you think a concept such as presented in The Matrix, is still far off?

Terr_ 1y ago

Nobody likes the Torment Nexus [0] but everyone has to use it because that's all the eyeballs are. Sometimes still attached. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

MichaelZuo 1y ago
Who gets to decide on the exact definition of a “Torment Nexus”? Presupposing whether everyone reading HN likes or dislkkes something not even agreed on yet seems silly.
- burnte 1y ago
  > Who gets to decide on the exact definition of a “Torment Nexus”? It's a joke that is intentionally vague so that the reader could come up with their own definition. Hopefully no one tries to make one so we don't need to define it. > Presupposing whether everyone reading HN likes or dislkkes something not even agreed on yet seems silly. Jokes tend to be on the silly side.
  - MichaelZuo 1y ago
    A joke about… what? The thing not yet defined?
    - groby_b 1y ago
      Yes. It is, in fact, possible to make jokes about abstract concepts and fictional entities. At least until the Torment Nexus outlaws it.
    - burnte 1y ago
      Yep! Ever seen Pulp Fiction? Do you know what's in the briefcase? No one does. It's a McGuffin. The Torment Nexus is also a McGuffin, it's a poorly defined thing that the actual definition of is irrelevant to the plot, only how it creates motivation for the characters. In this joke the "Torment Nexus" by name is clearly something you don't want, no one wants to be tormented. It's also the McGuffin because something named a Torment Nexus would HOPEFULLY be something someone wouldn't build, but the joke is "hey this guy went and built the horrible thing we didn't want!" Ever heard anyone make a Soylent Green joke? Same thing. All we know is that "soylent green in people" but we don't know HOW it's people, but it doesn't matter because we simply don't want to eat people under any condition.

muzani 1y ago

Option 1: Training data Option 2: Ad data Option 3: None of the above I'm going with the first two because I like to contribute my data to help out a trillion dollar company that doesn't even have customer support :)

falcor84 1y ago
Option 3 is probably "engagement numbers go up -> investors happy"
- georgefrowny 1y ago
  I think it's more like: investors permanently unhappy because they were promised ownership of God and now we're built out they're getting a few percent a year instead at best. Squeeze extra hard this quarter to get them off the Board's backs for another couple of months. Investors are never happy long term because even if you have a fantastic quarter, they'll throw a tantrum if you don't do it even better every single time.

espeed 1y ago

Knowing this is the direction things were headed, I have been trying to get Firefox and Google to create a feature that archives your browser history and pipes a stream of it in real time so that open-source personal AI engines can ingest it and index it. https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/archive-your-browser-history-and-pipe-a-stream-of-it-in-real/idi-p/103428 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/archive-your-browser-hi...

block_dagger 1y ago
Why not Chrome Devtools MCP?
- whilenot-dev 1y ago
  I understand GP like they want to browse normally and have that session's history feed into another indexing process via some IPC like D-Bus. It's meant to receive human events from the browser. Chrome Devtools MCP on the other hand is a browser automation tool. Its purpose is to make it trivial to send programmed events/event-flows to a browser session.
whilenot-dev 1y ago
AFAICS this has nothing to do with "open-source personal AI engines". The recorded history is stored in a SQLite database and is quite trivial to examine[0][1]. A simple script could extract the information and feed them to your indexer of choice. Developing such a script isn't the task for an internet browser engineering team. The question remains whether the indexer would really benefit from real-time ingestion while browsing. [0] Firefox: https://www.foxtonforensics.com/browser-history-examiner/firefox-history-location https://www.foxtonforensics.com/browser-history-examiner/fir... [1] Chrome: https://www.foxtonforensics.com/browser-history-examiner/chrome-history-location https://www.foxtonforensics.com/browser-history-examiner/chr...
- espeed 1y ago
  Due to the dynamic nature of the Web, URLs don't map to what you've seen. If I visit a URL at a certain time, the content I see is different than the content you see or even if I visit the same URL later. For example, if we want to know the tweets I'm seeing are the same as the tweets you're seeing and haven't been subtly modified by an AI, how do you do that? In the age of AI programming people, this will be important.

georgefrowny 1y ago

> and for what purpose exactly. The end goal for AI companies has always been to insert themselves into every data flow in the world.

0xAFFFF 1y ago
They also need an outlet for all the garbage they generate, hence the transformation of Sora into a shitty social network.
malfist 1y ago
Why provide a service when there is rent to be extracted by being a middleman?
Telemakhos 1y ago
It's funny how AI companies and national intelligence agencies have the same goal, in the much the same way that it used to be funny that social networks got people to volunteer information about themselves publicly that previous generations would not admit to a state security service.

dmos62 1y ago

Hate to be the dum-dum, but what's leading to humanity's self-destruction here? Loss of privacy? Outsized corporate power? Or, is this an extreme mix of hyperbole and sarcasm?

bayindirh 1y ago
Creating an impermeable barrier between truth and real-time slop generation. How can you know what you're reading is true when you can't verify what's happening out there? This is true from global events to a pasta recipe.
- dmos62 1y ago
  That's clearer. I can see how that can be a problem, but destruction of humanity? I think of this as a fun change in circumstance at best and a challenge at worst, rather than a disaster.
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    Consider a society where everyone has a different reality about something shared normally. Societies are built upon unspoken but shared truths and information (i.e. the social contract). Dissolve this information, dissolve or fragment the society. This, coupled with profiling and targeting will enable fragmentation of the societies, consolidation of power and many other shenanigans. This also enables continuous profiling, opening the door for "preemptive policing" (Minority Report style) and other dystopian things. Think about Cambridge Analytica or election manipulation, but on steroids. This is dangerous. Very dangerous.
    - artur_makly 1y ago
      This. Power and Control is only viable at scale when the aforementioned tacts are wielded with precision by "invisible hands" .. History has proved that keeping society stupid and disenfranchised is essential to control. Did you know that in the 1600s the King of England banned coffee? Simple.. fear of evolving propagating better ideas and more intense social fraternity. "Patrons read and debated the news of the day in coffeehouses, fueled by caffeine; the coffeehouse became a core engine of the new scientific and philosophical thought that characterized the era. Soon there were hundreds of establishments selling coffee." https://worldhistory.medium.com/why-the-king-of-england-banned-coffee-dce524b3e849 https://worldhistory.medium.com/why-the-king-of-england-bann...

meindnoch 1y ago

You're absolutely right!

the_af 1y ago
This is what the real Voight-Kampff test turned out to be :)

Mistletoe 1y ago

Hey now, don’t forget how they will just be able to hand over everything you’ve ever done to the government! We know no government or power would ever abuse that.

worik 1y ago
The government is not your biggest concern, (if you are not a brown skinned immigrant) * Insurence companies * Health insurers * Banks These all would like a chance to increase their profits at your expense based on your private data. Just because they will get it wrong 25% of the time will not mean positive profits for them... The government does not really care if you pay your taxes

deadbabe 1y ago

Personally I think it would be awesome if we could browse a 1999 version of the web. Better than the crap we have today, even if it is all just AI generated.

FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
https://wiby.org/ https://wiby.org/
jpfromlondon 11mo ago
https://neocities.org/browse https://neocities.org/browse

giancarlostoro 1y ago

Perplexity released theirs earlier, and as far as I know, they do not use any of your data like that for training. It's really a shame if that's how OpenAI is using your data. I was going to try their coding solution, but now I'm just flat out blacklisting them and I'll stick to Claude. For whatever reason Claude Code just understands me fully.

scrollop 1y ago
Yes, luckily the Perplexity brwoser doesn't use your data for training, only: "Perplexity CEO says its browser will track everything users do online to sell ‘hyper personalized’ ads" https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-browser-will-track-everything-users-do-online-to-sell-hyper-personalized-ads/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/perplexity-ceo-says-its-br... Burn them, burn them all to hell!

Esophagus4 1y ago

I recommend BrowserOS if you're looking for alternatives. Open-source agentic browser that uses any LLM provider (including local / Ollama). That being said... I tried it, and while it was fun and cool, I didn't get enough value out of it to use it regularly (I think this would go for any agentic browser).

TeMPOraL 1y ago

In all seriousness yes. Except maybe for the last 5 sentences. I fail to see the issue people have here. I mean, what exactly is the problem with training data here? This is not like advertising, where the data is used against you. It's not information about people that's being collected and extracted here - it's about collecting enough signal to identify patterns of thinking; it's about how human minds in general perceive the world. This is not going to hurt you. (LLMs ultimately might, when wielded by... the same parties that have been screwing you over for decades or more. It's not OpenAI that's screwing you over here - it's advertisers, marketers, news publishers, and others in the good ol' cohort of exploitative liars.)