Do you have any concern about all that data you put into NotebookLM ending up on Google servers? Are there any alternatives that keep your data on your system and not somewhere in the cloud?
Yes, there are always concerns about data being on Google servers. It depends on your needs I guess? It also depends if you trust Google’s promises. They claim that they don’t train their models on your personal data uploaded to NotebookLM.
If you want a fully private solution, you would have to build a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system yourself and put it on your own hardware. There are lots of solutions available for that. I may even write about how to do this in the future. You can find good information about it if you prompt one of the big LLM models about it.
If you are not living in the United States, you can make sure your data is housed in European servers or elsewhere to minimize the intrusion of the U.S. government in your data but let’s be real, if any government targets your data, nothing you or I could build would be truly safe.
Thank you for your quick reply. I am seriously going to look into setting up a RAG system on my computer. I am a novice and have a lot to learn but if there is a will there is a way. It would be great if you could do an article on this in the future.
The reason I am concerned about the Google ecosystem is I do not trust them with confidential data such as church financial records, or the minutes of a nominating committee, for example. Or pastoral visits involving challenging personal or family issues. I am not a pastor but I do a self supporting ministry and there is some data I don't want out there on some cloud server. I plan to set some sort of CMS since I have contacts around the world. Your substack articles has been very helpful so far in navigating this AI explosion into our personal and spiritual lives. God bless
Do you have any concern about all that data you put into NotebookLM ending up on Google servers? Are there any alternatives that keep your data on your system and not somewhere in the cloud?
Yes, handling confidential church data including financial and member data are both good cases for a private RAG.
Glad I could help if even in a small way 🙏 God bless you as well!
Yes, there are always concerns about data being on Google servers. It depends on your needs I guess? It also depends if you trust Google’s promises. They claim that they don’t train their models on your personal data uploaded to NotebookLM.
If you want a fully private solution, you would have to build a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system yourself and put it on your own hardware. There are lots of solutions available for that. I may even write about how to do this in the future. You can find good information about it if you prompt one of the big LLM models about it.
If you are not living in the United States, you can make sure your data is housed in European servers or elsewhere to minimize the intrusion of the U.S. government in your data but let’s be real, if any government targets your data, nothing you or I could build would be truly safe.
Do you have any experience using a RAG?
Thank you for your quick reply. I am seriously going to look into setting up a RAG system on my computer. I am a novice and have a lot to learn but if there is a will there is a way. It would be great if you could do an article on this in the future.
The reason I am concerned about the Google ecosystem is I do not trust them with confidential data such as church financial records, or the minutes of a nominating committee, for example. Or pastoral visits involving challenging personal or family issues. I am not a pastor but I do a self supporting ministry and there is some data I don't want out there on some cloud server. I plan to set some sort of CMS since I have contacts around the world. Your substack articles has been very helpful so far in navigating this AI explosion into our personal and spiritual lives. God bless