You could check out localllama on lemmy to run foss ai models locally, or you could check out duck.ai as someone else mentioned. Your mental health should come first so do what you can for privacy but don't feel bad about making compromises.
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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Privacy
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Yes, you can use an locally hosted LLM, but these never can be so powerfull as an AI with a lot of servers supporting. We have to difference it, between mere Chatbots, relying on its own database, often outdated and with the tendece to invent answers, and AI supported search engines, like Andi, You, DDG AI and others, which retrieve informations in realtime from the Web. But there is important that these are capable to difference trustworth sources from those which are not. Andi does a very good job here, because compare informations from several sites for the answer.
Ollama can pull info from the web using multiple sites, but yes local AIs are more prone to hallucination. Google did release Gemma3 which has a 27B model which is probably the most cost effective way to get into local models that rival chatgpt (if you can call about 2k cost effective). That was why I recommended duck.ai as well, as it has access to gpt and llama3.3:70b which will do a lot better.
The problem is privacythis don't change if the AI uses sources from big bompany - Google GPTs. I tested several free AIs from Hugging face, Futurepedia and Futuretools, and since over two years I use Andi as main search, I didn't find anything better. It use an own LLM, because Andi was the first AI search ever, former LazyWeb, long before the others released AI searches.
I get it, I've been there, but there is just no point in hating yourself because random big company wants to make money off of you, so they shove convenience in your face. Just do you best to align yourself to your values. Doesn't have to be perfect. It's ok if it's always work in progress. Don't put your life and wellbeing on hold.
Also duckduckgo.com/aichat is a thing.
Use Andisearch, there are zero privacy concerns and it's apart the most accurate (independent Benchmark)
Go set up an ollama instance and melt your worries away. Data in your hands once again.
However, you should also learn some restraint. Privacy and security aren't an all or nothing battle. Everyone has some holes in their armor, they need them to breathe.
most security planning workshops start with this statement:
"it is unreasonable as well as impossible to try and protect against every threat out there. there is no magic app, website, service that will solve everything. security is a mindset, and taking the time to understand what you want to protect and why will serve you better than any application."
that's a nice way to view it
The obsession with privacy can be taken to an extreme where it's a negative for your mental health. You can sacrifice a little privacy for another important benefit. 100% privacy is either not possible or practical, so don't let it stress you out. I'd be more concerned that AI might lead you down a wrong path, but you're an adult, use your own judgement.
I feel like the "getting into privacy" journey for a lot of people tends to look like a bell curve - you start off with a few apps and minor tweaks to protect you from the worst online privacy invasions, and then it gradually builds and builds until you become the sort of person that has all their cat pictures on an air-gapped encrypted server hidden in a cupboard somewhere while you use SearX to find the best mask that will confuse facial recognition cameras, and then after a while you break through and just go back to using a few apps and tweaks to protect from the worst of it again.
I get that, but the problem with this kind of AI is, I feel like I'm sacrificing a lot, not a little.
Don't make a bigger deal out of it than it is. Nothing bad is going to happen.
This. It's all incremental to me. No I can't be 100% free of big tech and surveillance, etc etc - but how much of my data has Google not gotten since I started paying for private email 5 years ago or so?
(Not much cause everyone else refuses to leave Gmail behind 😂 but all I can do is keep moving myself in that direction.)
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I don't think the AI is the problem here. I think you should see a real professional therapist.
I did, but that's not really the subject. I'm not taking GPT as a therapist by the way, I may have been misunderstood because english is not my first language. But I'm not sharing mental health things with it.
In any case, I think the problem I'm feeling can be real for many people that are not in mental state anyway. But I totally see why you would say that, thanks.
On top of a therapist, a group session that works on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy principles or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy principles also helps because it puts you in a situation around other real people who are dealing with similar issues as yourself.
The problem (in the USA at least) is affording access to either of those things might be more complicated.
This is the actual best suggestion in the thread, though. Self-hosting an LLM is nice and all but what this poor soul really needs is therapy with a human.
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host your own AI using: https://ollama.com/
this paired with "AnythingLLM" is pretty powerful, and you dont have to worry about data being sent anywhere
Llamacpp, Koboldcpp, and TabbyAPI are also popular local backends for local AI. SillyTavern or RisuAi are good frontends for a chat/RP style experience. Or LM Studio for a simple, all in one solution.
I actually got it to run reasonably on a mini PC in a docker container, but my setup also lets me use CPU power as a psuedo GPU.
I have been suggested to self host in the past. But as I'm concerned for ecology, and let's be a honest, a bit of my money too, I've thought that self hosting, meaning having the PC always on, was not a good thing. So I left the dilemma in this state, not knowing how "bad" this would actually be in terms of electric consumption, and if it was worth the trade with privacy or not.
That's pretty dependant on hardware. If you host small stuff , like a pihole or something, that can be done relatively cheaply, by using a micro-PC or a Raspberry Pi. Some services don't need to be always-on either, you only need stuff all the time if it's mission-critical, otherwise you can turn stuff on and off as necessary, for power-saving purposes. Self-hosting doesn't necessitate a huge rack and switches, or even your big gaming rig, my favorite thing to do with old laptops is throw Debian on it and find something I'd like to self-hosting from this list.
I honestly am not sure on the privacy of it but if you really need a useful tool that's ai driven I tend to trust perplexity.ai for general questions and research but I agree with one of the others just run ollama if you can
Privacy is not all or nothing, and using one thing doesn't cancel all efforts somewhere else.
Don't go so far into the privacy hole that it affects your mental health. Just do what's easy for you.
In the end you're right, but as I was answering in another post, AI seems so big for the future and potentially invasive, that if I start giving this up, not having a google account or whatever, to me, would seem like nothing in comparison, if I'm trying to maintain a relative degree of privacy. So I feel like it's not giving up a bit of my infos, but probably all of it, specially when using an app. Not sure if I'm making sense. But it's like "ok, I won't give this man my info". "This other man, on the other hand, can live in my house and listen to everything"
You could always try out an AI service that doesn't collect data like duck.ai: https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/duckai/
Privacy issues aside, don’t allow yourself to become too comfortable with leaning on AI for so much. Aside from the obvious things like AI info being flat out wrong sometimes and hallucinations, it’s going to train you into some bad habit holes during a vulnerable time. Look at how quickly we reach to map software for travel. It causes us to get mentally lazy.
If you are focused on using it and worried about privacy, you can host your own model like someone else mentioned, but you need a pretty beefy computer for it, and you could potentially host a model on the cloud (I know that breaks privacy and self-hosting rules a bit), but that can get expensive.
Edit: You could give Jan a try.
I’m a programmer and I’ve had to discipline myself with how I use Copilot. I try to lean on it for troubleshooting code I’ve written, and for doing tedious tasks that I know how to do but want to save time on.
I am definitely leaning on AI quite a bit lately. I ask and check sources now and then tho.
Side thinking, but I'm ot sure how we'll see this problem in the future, when/if AI is "guaranteed" to basically never get things wrong. It's the same with GPS/Maps software, since you're talking about it. I've always been way worse than average to situate myself in space (? sorry, bad english probably), and GPS helps me immensely, me and my anxiety (and even then, I still manage to get stressed and miss things sometimes lol), it's basically right most of the time as far as I know. Now IA being "always right" (let's simplify) would have other consequences entirely, since it touches way more aspects of what we do as humans.
Not sure what to think from here, but yes, I'm definitely checking sources for important things, and restraining myself to not type every request I'm looking for into a chatbot.
Oh I am a terrible navigator haha. I lean on tools a ton, so it’s not faulting you. I just worry about AI because of how complex and enticing it is.
I find that if you diversify the models you use, you can find what works best for what you’re asking. I use Copilot daily at work and I have to coach it sometimes. I’ll go off on the web to check its work and correct it as needed. Sometimes it works, other times it gets into a loop of unhelpful answers.
You don't actually have to have a beefy computer to self host. I know with deepseek there's a 1.5b model which is optimized for low end hardware. I self hosted it on a desktop from 2012 and it worked alright. 8gb RAM, i5 processer, quad core. Was the GPU usage high? Yep. Still worked tho.
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Chill out my friend. We use FOSS and privacy respecting things to make our lives easier and more enjoyable . Don't stress yourself. If you need to do something then do it. No need to feel bad.
Something is always better than nothing. You've done so much in terms of better privacy and using FOSS so you're doing great and better than most people. Just live your life and improve things step by step.
Thanks In a way I did still change a lot of habits. This on the other does feel like giving up a huge fight and making my brain think that I actually don't care about privacy/Foss at all, I'm usually not a "all or nothing" type of person, but it's a bit hard to wrap my head around this time
Dude, it's all good. I doubt anyone has entirely removed intrusion from their lives. I've been the nut in my family, friends and work environments (not complaining, I actually love being that person) on privacy and cybersecurity. I still keep my Gmail account, the one I used to buy all my movies when I thought Google wasn't evil. My kids love using the Lenovo Google Assistant screens. I have 2 Chromecast with Google TV with the account I mentioned (my TVs do not connect to the internet). I play on my PS5 with my account and use my credit card (none of that temp credit card or cash or crypto), but I haven't used my PayPal in years (but still have it). I buy shit on Amazon (it's so convenient).
The point being, do what you can to safeguard your privacy as much as possible, as long as it does not affect your mental health. You need Facebook for whatever reason? You can minimize the invasion, and still use it. (Full disclosure, I fucking hate Meta, so I don't use any of its platforms, or even their open source language model). I'm on GrapheneOS in my phone, use Linux exclusively in my personal life, but I'm picking up a surface pro 11th Gen for work this Friday. I need my job, everything is windows based, and it's just getting harder to use Ms shit from Linux effectively. So, I use Windows. I have a good job, get paid well, so, I have to decide if that's worth some of my privacy.
Live life man, enjoy, be happy, then worry about the rest.
I understand where you're coming from. I even went as far as to not using Bluetooth headphones anymore because of the radiation.I switched all my plastic utensils for wood and steel.I swapped out all my apps for foss apps.I was never really one to ever use AI for anything.I've kind of always enjoyed the hunt and the learning process when it came to figuring out foss applications. But it does feel super paranoid to always be worried about people watching you. When in reality, they aren't watching you. They are using your data to make money. They don't really care about who you are. So in short, I have started using Bluetooth headphones again, LOL.
I didn't tell ChatGPT who I am. I have a separate email address for it and everything.
Just keep in back of mind how everything is being linked and profiled behind the scenes. Without anything else, all they have to link you to other things is an IP address and an email. IP addresses aren't terribly reliable these days. There may be supercookie/fingerprinting mischief going on though.
But lately I've been in a rough state mentally (I say lately but it's always been with me) and having GPT guide me and being able to just dictate what I think helps me a lot on various levels, for various reasons.
You should consider journaling and/or a support group and/or professional help. You say it's always been with you, and relying on an LLM to help you parse your thoughts is only going to lead to bad places. It does not have the knowledge or skill of a psychologist, even with its vast database. It doesn't "know" the correct way to apply psychological concepts or know when you're engaging in destructive behavior, and it could even reinforce those same behaviors. AI can feel like a friend to talk to, but it's an illusion.
But at this point, using ChatGPT with a mic, isn't this basically cancelling every effort I've made? (using it in the first place anyway)
If you're telling it your deepest secrets and current problems, yes. You're putting your personal information out there for a profit-driven company to use at their discretion. Several people have suggested self-hosting, and I would agree, but ultimately I think you need to seek human help for the root cause of why you're leaning so heavily upon AI.
Those seem like good advice, but when I was saying dictate, I was just talking about sending my requests to the chatbot app via microphone, not writing. I tend to be super adhd-y, forget things, be overwhelmed, get into sideway things, and having a quick way to ask this or that, while thinking out loud, is kinda what helps me. But yes, in a way, some sort of journaling, trying to focus and slowing down would help me.
Writing is a really good tool for slowing down. Handwriting even more so.
Yes, you are leaking data, but don't panik. First of all, your mental health here and now is important - without it you won't have energy for other things. Next, It takes a lot of energy to de-google or de-corp and you don't wan't to 'leak' now, but in 6 months, you'll have your own private/foss talking AI assistant, and it will help you cut the ties to the last corporation then.
So, soon you'll be more 'invisible' for the corps, and maybe you can live with the spying/manipulation for a moment longer ? Not sure how long it takes for their AI to find you anyway, but at least the removed have to work for it..
Alternatively, get a free account at Groq (also have 'whisper' stt), or sambanova and install/use open-webui for talking. These new hardware corps don't train AI on free user interactions, and they probably don't sell your information - yet. There are other methods for p2p sharing of AI resources, but they may not provide quality high enough or with all modalities.
Sounds like you might be sacrificing your mental wellbeing for some privacy gains. You should probably consider your priorities. Which one comes first?
If you say it like that...I should certainly try and remember the priorities in some situations
You see, the point is that privacy is really nice to have. However, it’s not worth it when the price you pay is your mental balance and serenity. There are easier and cheaper bits of privacy you can pursue, but you need to know where to draw the line. Some things just come with an unacceptable price. Maybe GPT is like that in your case.
But lately I’ve been in a rough state mentally (I say lately but it’s always been with me) and having GPT guide me and being able to just dictate what I think helps me a lot on various levels, for various reasons.
Do you mean you use it to brain dump your thoughts and things like that?
If so, have you considered simply... writing stuff down with a pen on paper? Aka, journaling.
I've been doing that for, well, almost all all my live (started as little boy, I'm now well into my 50s) and it has always been tremendous help to better understand whatever is going on in my head/happening around me/with other people/the world.
Pen and paper journaling is also 100% not online, unless you want it to be. And it's cheap, when it's not completely free ;)
Sorry, lots of posts to answer to, but I've basically answered yours in another post I suppose (Telorand @reddthat.com's post)
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