LLM chatbots have gotten scary good but the lack of privacy limit their utility My use of chatbot LLMs have gone from just occasionally using it for funny party tricks ("write me a poem in the voice of snoop dog") To now treating it as a trusted advisor I engage during any serious task and regularly use it as an indispensable research tool I wouldn't say the hallucination problem has been "solved" yet, but the latest frontier thinking models have gotten scary good (at least a 100x multiplier in knowledge acquisition speed) That said, the biggest limiting factor with LLMs I face today is their complete lack of privacy, both technologically and legally There’s no such thing as “user chatbot confidentiality” like there is with a lawyer, doctor, or therapist, and like with most big tech firms, they don’t minimize their data collection at all Given the conversational and personal nature of how most people tend to use LLM chatbots, that's quite concerning For example, consider the following two set of facts: 1. When you delete a chatlog, or use a temporary chat session, the LLM provider typically retains the chatlog for at least 30 days (possibly longer for “legal and security" reasons or if the chatlogs have "already been de-identified” or "disassociated") 2. Recent court rulings have compelled OpenAI to produce millions of “anonymized” historical user chat logs as part of the NYT copyright infringement lawsuit (along with retaining all chatlogs from May 13, 2025 - September 26, 2025, even if user requests deletion) In other words, you have no legal right to LLM privacy and can expect all of your LLM chatlogs to be leaked at some point It's unlikely the law will change on LLM privacy rights anytime soon, so the real solution will be for LLM providers to simply not collect or have access to this this data in the first place (zero access encryption, confidential computing, etc) Until then, don't share with a chatbot what you wouldn't post publicly And no, my tweets are not LLM generated, the dopamine hits I get from this website are from sharing my raw thoughts, check the typos to verify(Zach Rynes | CLG)