5 ms·

I'm surprised nobody else has commented on this. This is a very straightforward and useful thing for a small locally runnable model to do.

ashwindharne 6mo ago
Same here, this is an incredibly useful thing to have in the toolkit
apothegm 6mo ago
And also something that it’s dangerous to try to do stochastically.
- hiAndrewQuinn 6mo ago
  It's going to be stochastic in some sense whether you want it to be or not, human error never reaches zero percent. I would bet you a penny you'd get better results doing one two-second automated pass + your usual PII redaction than your PII redaction alone.
  - cyanydeez 6mo ago
    I think the problem is most secrets arn't stochastic; they're determinant. When the user types in the wrong password, it should be blocked. Using a probabilistic model suggests an attacker only now needs to be really close, but not correct. Sure, there's some math that says being really close and exact arn't a big deal; but then you're also saying your secrets don't need to be exact when decoding them and they absolutely do atm. Sure looks like a weird privacy veil that sorta might work for some things, like frosted glass, but think of a toilet stall with all frosted glass, are you still comfortable going to the bathroom in there?
    - CityOfThrowaway 6mo ago
      I dunno what use case you're thinking this is for. The use case for this is that many enterprise customers want SaaS products to strip PII from ingested content, and there's no non-model way to do it. Think, ingesting call transcripts where those calls may include credit card numbers or private data. The call transcripts are very useful for various things, but for obvious reasons we don't want to ingest the PII.
      - traceroute66 6mo ago
        > Think, ingesting call transcripts where those calls may include credit card numbers or private data. The call transcripts are very useful for various things, but for obvious reasons we don't want to ingest the PII. Credit card numbers are deterministic. A five year old could write a script to strip out credit card numbers. As for other PII ? You're seriously expecting an LLM to find every instance of every random piece of PII ? Worldwide ? In multiple languages ? I've got an igloo I'd like to sell you ...
        CityOfThrowaway 6mo ago
        I think this is a bit dramatic of a comment. Credit card numbers relayed over the phone are not deterministic... "four three uh let's see sorry my vision is bad six eight..." Easy versions of problems are easy. But reality is messy. And no, neither I nor anybody else is expecting a 50B parameter model to find every instance. But finding 90% or 95% or 99% is pretty good, and sufficiently good for many use cases.
        traceroute66 6mo ago
        > Credit card numbers relayed over the phone are not deterministic... I don't know the last time you relayed card details over the phone, but the last 100 times I did it, the agent did one of two things: (a) Said "Please wait while I turn off recording"; or (b) Transferred the call to an automated system that read the card details via the phone keypad input and then took back control of the call afterwards. Relaying card details over the phone is a problem that has been comprehensively solved. You don't need an LLM for it ! > But finding 90% or 95% or 99% is pretty good I would humbly suggest that you are over-estimating the capabilities of an LLM. ;)
  - ori_b 6mo ago
    The advantage of computers was that they didn't make human errors; they did things repeatedly, quickly, and predictably. If I'm going to accept human error, I'd like it to come from a human.
    - pigpag 6mo ago
      [dead]
    - creesch 6mo ago
      > The advantage of computers was that they didn't make human errors; Sure they do, computers repeatedly, quickly, and predictably do what they are programmed to do. Which includes any human errors in that programming.
      - laserlight 6mo ago
        > predictably do what they are programmed to do And now they predictably do what they are not programmed to do.
    - CityOfThrowaway 6mo ago
      OTOH, if you're willing to accept human-level error rates... why would you not do so at a burst-scalable task per minute and 1/1000th the cost? I've built large human data entry operations. Variable throughput, monotony, hiring and perf management and firing, management, quality management. All of these things are large investments of human effort and money. If I can achieve the same quality level (or in some use cases, even slightly degraded output) with software scaling characteristics and costs... I see zero reasons outside regulatory compliance reasons to have people do it.
- moralestapia 6mo ago
  The alternative being?
- agnishom 6mo ago
  One could chain a regex based system together with this
hiAndrewQuinn 6mo ago
For the confused: this link must have gotten revived or something, I posted this comment a few days ago. Looks like it's getting the accolades I claim it deserves now.
- tanelpoder 6mo ago
  It was put into second-chance pool by moderators. I originally submitted this link a few days ago and today got this (semi?)automated email from HN, an excerpt below: The submission "OpenAI Privacy Filter" that you posted to Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870901) looks good, but hasn't had much attention so far. We put it in the second-chance pool, so it will get a random placement on the front page some time in the next day or so. This is a way of giving good HN submissions multiple chances at the front page. If you're curious, you can read about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 and other links there.
Fraaaank 6mo ago
From a compliance POV it's not enough. For example: "<NAME PERSON ONE> is president of the United States" is still identifiable even though the name has been redacted. Since you can't be 100% certain that a filter redacts all personal data, you'd have to make sure that you have measures in place which allow OpenAI to legally process personal data on your behalf. Otherwise you'd technically have a data breach (from a GDPR pov). And if OpenAI can legally process personal data on your behalf, why bother filtering if processing with filtering is also compliant?

ashwindharne 6mo ago

Same here, this is an incredibly useful thing to have in the toolkit

apothegm 6mo ago

And also something that it’s dangerous to try to do stochastically.

hiAndrewQuinn 6mo ago
It's going to be stochastic in some sense whether you want it to be or not, human error never reaches zero percent. I would bet you a penny you'd get better results doing one two-second automated pass + your usual PII redaction than your PII redaction alone.
- cyanydeez 6mo ago
  I think the problem is most secrets arn't stochastic; they're determinant. When the user types in the wrong password, it should be blocked. Using a probabilistic model suggests an attacker only now needs to be really close, but not correct. Sure, there's some math that says being really close and exact arn't a big deal; but then you're also saying your secrets don't need to be exact when decoding them and they absolutely do atm. Sure looks like a weird privacy veil that sorta might work for some things, like frosted glass, but think of a toilet stall with all frosted glass, are you still comfortable going to the bathroom in there?
  - CityOfThrowaway 6mo ago
    I dunno what use case you're thinking this is for. The use case for this is that many enterprise customers want SaaS products to strip PII from ingested content, and there's no non-model way to do it. Think, ingesting call transcripts where those calls may include credit card numbers or private data. The call transcripts are very useful for various things, but for obvious reasons we don't want to ingest the PII.
    - traceroute66 6mo ago
      > Think, ingesting call transcripts where those calls may include credit card numbers or private data. The call transcripts are very useful for various things, but for obvious reasons we don't want to ingest the PII. Credit card numbers are deterministic. A five year old could write a script to strip out credit card numbers. As for other PII ? You're seriously expecting an LLM to find every instance of every random piece of PII ? Worldwide ? In multiple languages ? I've got an igloo I'd like to sell you ...
      - CityOfThrowaway 6mo ago
        I think this is a bit dramatic of a comment. Credit card numbers relayed over the phone are not deterministic... "four three uh let's see sorry my vision is bad six eight..." Easy versions of problems are easy. But reality is messy. And no, neither I nor anybody else is expecting a 50B parameter model to find every instance. But finding 90% or 95% or 99% is pretty good, and sufficiently good for many use cases.
        traceroute66 6mo ago
        > Credit card numbers relayed over the phone are not deterministic... I don't know the last time you relayed card details over the phone, but the last 100 times I did it, the agent did one of two things: (a) Said "Please wait while I turn off recording"; or (b) Transferred the call to an automated system that read the card details via the phone keypad input and then took back control of the call afterwards. Relaying card details over the phone is a problem that has been comprehensively solved. You don't need an LLM for it ! > But finding 90% or 95% or 99% is pretty good I would humbly suggest that you are over-estimating the capabilities of an LLM. ;)
- ori_b 6mo ago
  The advantage of computers was that they didn't make human errors; they did things repeatedly, quickly, and predictably. If I'm going to accept human error, I'd like it to come from a human.
  - pigpag 6mo ago
    [dead]
  - creesch 6mo ago
    > The advantage of computers was that they didn't make human errors; Sure they do, computers repeatedly, quickly, and predictably do what they are programmed to do. Which includes any human errors in that programming.
    - laserlight 6mo ago
      > predictably do what they are programmed to do And now they predictably do what they are not programmed to do.
  - CityOfThrowaway 6mo ago
    OTOH, if you're willing to accept human-level error rates... why would you not do so at a burst-scalable task per minute and 1/1000th the cost? I've built large human data entry operations. Variable throughput, monotony, hiring and perf management and firing, management, quality management. All of these things are large investments of human effort and money. If I can achieve the same quality level (or in some use cases, even slightly degraded output) with software scaling characteristics and costs... I see zero reasons outside regulatory compliance reasons to have people do it.
moralestapia 6mo ago
The alternative being?
agnishom 6mo ago
One could chain a regex based system together with this

hiAndrewQuinn 6mo ago

For the confused: this link must have gotten revived or something, I posted this comment a few days ago. Looks like it's getting the accolades I claim it deserves now.

tanelpoder 6mo ago
It was put into second-chance pool by moderators. I originally submitted this link a few days ago and today got this (semi?)automated email from HN, an excerpt below: The submission "OpenAI Privacy Filter" that you posted to Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870901) looks good, but hasn't had much attention so far. We put it in the second-chance pool, so it will get a random placement on the front page some time in the next day or so. This is a way of giving good HN submissions multiple chances at the front page. If you're curious, you can read about it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 and other links there.

Fraaaank 6mo ago

From a compliance POV it's not enough. For example: "<NAME PERSON ONE> is president of the United States" is still identifiable even though the name has been redacted. Since you can't be 100% certain that a filter redacts all personal data, you'd have to make sure that you have measures in place which allow OpenAI to legally process personal data on your behalf. Otherwise you'd technically have a data breach (from a GDPR pov). And if OpenAI can legally process personal data on your behalf, why bother filtering if processing with filtering is also compliant?