cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/55185832
Hi everyone,
I’m looking for recommendations on free (or freemium) AI assistants that meet these criteria:
✅ Strong capabilities – Can handle complex questions and research. ✅ Privacy-respecting – Doesn’t train on user data, preferably E2E encrypted. ✅ Ethical stance – Not complicit in oppression or human rights violations (Palestine, sudan, uygur, etc). ✅ Not on BDS list – Companies that aren’t supporting or profiting from occupation.
Which AI tools have you found that respect both privacy AND human rights?
I’d really appreciate honest recommendations and experiences. Trying to find tools that align with my values without sacrificing functionality.
Thanks in advance! 🤝
Private, it is not, but there is an endeavor in India to outsource the computations to users, using whatever computational power each user can spare from their smartphones and laptops during low to no usage hours (nights, for instance). The idea is that with a population of the size of India, it would be possible for such a “p2p model training” to contend with big tech’s unethical data centers.
I think your only actually privacy option is to run Ollama locally. Any 2-3b parameters model with Q4 quant will run okay on a decent laptop
https://sleepingrobots.com/dreams/stop-using-ollama/
Grab a binary from https://github.com/ggml-org/llama.cpp/releases, open your terminal:
llama-cli -m <your model file>.ggufOr I guess the instructions on https://llama.app/ is how they want people to use llama.cpp
The only option that fully meets “doesn’t see my data” is running a model locally. Ollama or LM Studio with one of the open-weight models runs fine on a decent laptop, and nothing leaves your machine. It’s weaker than the big hosted ones for long research questions, but better than people expect for everyday stuff.
If you need hosted, the ones usually mentioned for privacy are Lumo (Proton, says it keeps no logs and encrypts saved chats), Duck.ai (DuckDuckGo proxies your requests to several models without your IP, free) and Le Chat by Mistral (EU, you can turn off training on your chats). None of them is end-to-end encrypted in the strict sense, because the model has to read your prompt to answer it. On the ethics part I’d check each company’s ownership and investors yourself, that changes faster than any list.
