Yes, Ollama or a range of other backends (Ooba, Kobold, etc.) can run LLMs locally. Huggingface has a huge number of models suited to different tasks like coding, storywriting, general purpose, and so on. If you run both the backend and frontend locally, then no one monetizes your data.

The part I'd argue that the previous poster is glazing over a little bit is performance. Unless you have an enterprise-grade GPU cluster sitting in your basement, you're going to make compromises on speed and/or quality relative to the giant models that run on commercial services.

It's also going to cost more, because you almost certainly are only going to be using your hardware a tiny fraction of the time.

If you don't want corporations to use you chats as data, don't use corporate hosted language models.

Even non-public chats are archived by OpenAI, and the terms of service of ChatGPT essentially give OpenAI the right to use your conversations in any way that they choose.

You can bet they'll eventually find ways to monetize your data at some point in the future. If you think GoogleAds is powerful, wait until people's assistants are trained with every manipulative technique we've ever invented and are trying to sell you breakfast cereals or boner pills...

You can't uncheck that box except by not using it in the first place. But people will sell their soul to a company in order to not have to learn a little bit about self-hosting

If you don't want your conversations to be public, how about you don't tick the checkbook that says "make this public." This isn't OpenAI's problem, its an idiot user problem.

This is basically a "if you don’t want your data to be used, run your own internet" comment

It’s just not doable for pretty much everyone

Modern LLMs can serve you for most tasks while running locally on your machine.

Something like GPT4ALL will do the trick on any platform of your choosing if you have at least 8gb of RAM (and for most people nowadays it's true).

It has a simple, idiot-proof GUI and doesn't collect data if you don't allow it to. It's also open source, and, being local, it does not need Internet connection once you downloaded a model you need (which normally takes a single-digit number of gigabytes).

If you want actual good features like deep research or chain of thought, eh, not sure it’s a good choice

The models will also not be very powerful

This is a case of corporation taking advantage of technically idiotic userbase, which is most of the general public. OpenAI using a dark pattern so that users can't easily unchecked that box nor making that text that says "this can be indexed by search engines" brightly visible.

And you don't need any of that. You don't even need a local LLM.

So if you decide you want it, then that's on you, and you have made the choice to give up your data.

and you don't need a computer, and you don't need to eat good food

It's just that you lose so much productivity, comfort and so on

When such a tool is a difference between 30 mins and 5 hours of work, then you simply use it. You either move with the masses to compete, or you don't, but you'll pay the price anyways.

If you think LLMs are as fundamental as having a computer or internet access, then I really just don't know what to say.

You have clearly never been in that situation then. It is obviously not like this for many people, but for students for example, it often means a lot more

I don't think OpenAI gets anything from this, I think they just failed to realize how stupid the average person is.

Yeah, this thing that's notorious for hallucinating and has only recently become even somewhat reliable is essential.

How did all those students from 2021 even survive??

Jesus, we're absolutely fucked.

Surviving is different than living in good conditions

As with every tool, it has downsides. Learn to use it or continue to whine

They get more human written text, which is one of the most powerful things in their doomed attempt to forestall model collapse

That is... literally my point.

You're comparing very disparate things. And I already pointed out the downside. No one here is whining about anything.

And I already pointed the upside. You don't have to use the default UI though, custom UI exists, APIs exists, and you don't have to enter personal infos in prompts, as well as use your residential IP... this pretty much makes it unlinkable to you