<story><title>Ask HN: GPT-3 reveals my full name – can I do anything?</title><text>Alternatively: What&amp;#x27;s the current status of Personally Identifying Information and language models?&lt;p&gt;I try to hide my real name whenever possible, out of an abundance of caution. You can still find it if you search carefully, but in today&amp;#x27;s hostile internet I see this kind of soft pseudonymity as my digital personal space, and expect to have it respected.&lt;p&gt;When playing around in GPT-3 I tried making sentences with my username. Imagine my surprise when I see it spitting out my (globally unique, unusual) full name!&lt;p&gt;Looking around, I found a paper that says language models spitting out personal information is a problem[1], a Google blog post that says there&amp;#x27;s not much that can be done[2], and an article that says OpenAI might automatically replace phone numbers in the future but other types of PII are harder to remove[3]. But nothing on what is &lt;i&gt;actually&lt;/i&gt; being done.&lt;p&gt;If I had found my personal information on Google search results, or Facebook, I could ask the information to be removed, but GPT-3 seems to have no such support. Are we supposed to accept that large language models may reveal private information, with no recourse?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t care much about my &lt;i&gt;name&lt;/i&gt; being public, but I don&amp;#x27;t know what else it might have memorized (political affiliations? Sexual preferences? Posts from 13-year old me?). In the age of GDPR this feels like an enormous regression in privacy.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: a small thank you for everybody commenting so far for not directly linking to specific results or actually writing my name, however easy it might be.&lt;p&gt;If my request for pseudonymity sounds strange given my lax infosec:&lt;p&gt;- I&amp;#x27;m more worried about the consequences of language models in general than my own case, and&lt;p&gt;- people have done a lot more for a lot less name information[4].&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;abs&amp;#x2F;2012.07805&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;abs&amp;#x2F;2012.07805&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ai.googleblog.com&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;privacy-considerations-in-large.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ai.googleblog.com&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;privacy-considerations-in-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theregister.com&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;openai_gpt3_data&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theregister.com&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;openai_gpt3_data&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Slate_Star_Codex#New_York_Times_controversy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Slate_Star_Codex#New_York_Time...&lt;/a&gt;</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>aaaaaaaaata</author><text>&amp;gt; In short, I don&amp;#x27;t want to live in a society where everyone is anonymous.&lt;p&gt;You wear a name tag to the pub, or supermarket?</text></item><item><author>dcow</author><text>In short, I don&amp;#x27;t want to live in a society where everyone is anonymous. That doesn&amp;#x27;t sound very &lt;i&gt;social&lt;/i&gt; at all and doesn&amp;#x27;t work at scale. I want to live in a society where I can build strong respectful adult relationships with people and not immediately judge, shun, and twitter mob someone who says they don&amp;#x27;t 100% agree with my lifestyle. Tolerating differences in viewpoints and lifestyles is true diversity. Diversity is not finding people with different physical features who all actually think the same and putting them on a magazine cover or in the same office together.</text></item><item><author>dcow</author><text>On top of that: anonymity &lt;i&gt;should not be required&lt;/i&gt; to explore controversy &lt;i&gt;at all&lt;/i&gt;. &lt;i&gt;That’s&lt;/i&gt; the chilling effect. The issue is that as a society we have failed royally to internalize tolerating freedom of expression. Instead we choose to censor and silence people who wish to explore controversy even though we have laws in place that protect one’s freedom to express themselves however they desire without damaging recourse to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.&lt;p&gt;Anonymity is certainly a tool that can be used in dire situations when there are real credible threats and the stakes are high. However it takes a certain type of &lt;i&gt;courage&lt;/i&gt; to express oneself freely which would be really nice to see in the majority of all other situations. Instead of exploring controversy anonymously, we should aim as a society to explore it normally and simply build up the intellectual maturity and capacity to tolerate controversy like adults and not children…</text></item><item><author>gentleman11</author><text>These are called “chilling effects,” they cause people to self censor when it comes to socially controversial positions. Historically, this would include womens suffrage, black rights, gay rights, various religious positions…&lt;p&gt;It’s not okay to be tracked so thoroughly that people stop feeling they can explore controversy online</text></item><item><author>ChrisMarshallNY</author><text>I gave up anonymity. I just learned to lean into taking control of my ID. Some time ago, I realized that there&amp;#x27;s no way for me to participate online, without things being attributed to me.&lt;p&gt;I learned this, by setting up a Disqus ID. I wanted to comment on a blog post, and started to set up an account.&lt;p&gt;After I started the process, it came back, with a list of random posts, from around the Internet (and some, &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; old), and said &amp;quot;Are these yours? If so, would you like to associate them with your account?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I freaked. Many of them were outright troll comments (I was not always the haloed saint that you see before you) that I had &lt;i&gt;sworn&lt;/i&gt; were done anonymously. They came from many different places (including DejaNews). I have no idea how Disqus found them.&lt;p&gt;Every single one of them was mine. Many, were ones that I had &lt;i&gt;sworn&lt;/i&gt; were dead and buried in a deep grave in the mountains.&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, I do not have a Disqus ID.&lt;p&gt;Being non-anonymous means that I need to behave myself, online. I come across as a bit of a stuffy bore, but I suspect my IRL persona is that way, as well.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s OK.</text></item><item><author>jmillikin</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  &amp;gt; I try to hide my real name whenever possible, out of an
  &amp;gt; abundance of caution. You can still find it if you search
  &amp;gt; carefully, but in today&amp;#x27;s hostile internet I see this kind
  &amp;gt; of soft pseudonymity as my digital personal space, and expect
  &amp;gt; to have it respected.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Without judging whether the goal is good or not, I will gently point out that your current approach doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be effective. A Google search for &amp;quot;BoppreH&amp;quot; turned up several results on the first page with what appears to be your full name, along with other results linking to various emails that have been associated with that name. Results include Github commits, mailing list archives, and third-party code that cited your Github account as &amp;quot;work by $NAME&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;As a purely practical matter -- again, not going into whether this is how things &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; be, merely how they do be -- it is futile to want the internet as a whole to have a concept of privacy, or to respect the concept of a &amp;quot;digital personal space&amp;quot;. If your phone number or other PII has ever been associated with your identity, that association will be in place indefinitely and is probably available on multiple data broker sites.&lt;p&gt;The best way to be anonymous on the internet is to be &lt;i&gt;anonymous&lt;/i&gt;, which means posting without any name or identifier at all. If that isn&amp;#x27;t practical, then using a non-meaningful pseudonym and not posting anything personally identifiable is recommended.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>riffic</author><text>the cameras that track your every movement inside a supermarket (plus the software that labels your image with a unique identifier) have you pinned down pretty well already, no need for nametags.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: GPT-3 reveals my full name – can I do anything?</title><text>Alternatively: What&amp;#x27;s the current status of Personally Identifying Information and language models?&lt;p&gt;I try to hide my real name whenever possible, out of an abundance of caution. You can still find it if you search carefully, but in today&amp;#x27;s hostile internet I see this kind of soft pseudonymity as my digital personal space, and expect to have it respected.&lt;p&gt;When playing around in GPT-3 I tried making sentences with my username. Imagine my surprise when I see it spitting out my (globally unique, unusual) full name!&lt;p&gt;Looking around, I found a paper that says language models spitting out personal information is a problem[1], a Google blog post that says there&amp;#x27;s not much that can be done[2], and an article that says OpenAI might automatically replace phone numbers in the future but other types of PII are harder to remove[3]. But nothing on what is &lt;i&gt;actually&lt;/i&gt; being done.&lt;p&gt;If I had found my personal information on Google search results, or Facebook, I could ask the information to be removed, but GPT-3 seems to have no such support. Are we supposed to accept that large language models may reveal private information, with no recourse?&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t care much about my &lt;i&gt;name&lt;/i&gt; being public, but I don&amp;#x27;t know what else it might have memorized (political affiliations? Sexual preferences? Posts from 13-year old me?). In the age of GDPR this feels like an enormous regression in privacy.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: a small thank you for everybody commenting so far for not directly linking to specific results or actually writing my name, however easy it might be.&lt;p&gt;If my request for pseudonymity sounds strange given my lax infosec:&lt;p&gt;- I&amp;#x27;m more worried about the consequences of language models in general than my own case, and&lt;p&gt;- people have done a lot more for a lot less name information[4].&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;abs&amp;#x2F;2012.07805&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arxiv.org&amp;#x2F;abs&amp;#x2F;2012.07805&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ai.googleblog.com&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;privacy-considerations-in-large.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;ai.googleblog.com&amp;#x2F;2020&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;privacy-considerations-in-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theregister.com&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;openai_gpt3_data&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.theregister.com&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;openai_gpt3_data&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Slate_Star_Codex#New_York_Times_controversy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Slate_Star_Codex#New_York_Time...&lt;/a&gt;</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>aaaaaaaaata</author><text>&amp;gt; In short, I don&amp;#x27;t want to live in a society where everyone is anonymous.&lt;p&gt;You wear a name tag to the pub, or supermarket?</text></item><item><author>dcow</author><text>In short, I don&amp;#x27;t want to live in a society where everyone is anonymous. That doesn&amp;#x27;t sound very &lt;i&gt;social&lt;/i&gt; at all and doesn&amp;#x27;t work at scale. I want to live in a society where I can build strong respectful adult relationships with people and not immediately judge, shun, and twitter mob someone who says they don&amp;#x27;t 100% agree with my lifestyle. Tolerating differences in viewpoints and lifestyles is true diversity. Diversity is not finding people with different physical features who all actually think the same and putting them on a magazine cover or in the same office together.</text></item><item><author>dcow</author><text>On top of that: anonymity &lt;i&gt;should not be required&lt;/i&gt; to explore controversy &lt;i&gt;at all&lt;/i&gt;. &lt;i&gt;That’s&lt;/i&gt; the chilling effect. The issue is that as a society we have failed royally to internalize tolerating freedom of expression. Instead we choose to censor and silence people who wish to explore controversy even though we have laws in place that protect one’s freedom to express themselves however they desire without damaging recourse to their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.&lt;p&gt;Anonymity is certainly a tool that can be used in dire situations when there are real credible threats and the stakes are high. However it takes a certain type of &lt;i&gt;courage&lt;/i&gt; to express oneself freely which would be really nice to see in the majority of all other situations. Instead of exploring controversy anonymously, we should aim as a society to explore it normally and simply build up the intellectual maturity and capacity to tolerate controversy like adults and not children…</text></item><item><author>gentleman11</author><text>These are called “chilling effects,” they cause people to self censor when it comes to socially controversial positions. Historically, this would include womens suffrage, black rights, gay rights, various religious positions…&lt;p&gt;It’s not okay to be tracked so thoroughly that people stop feeling they can explore controversy online</text></item><item><author>ChrisMarshallNY</author><text>I gave up anonymity. I just learned to lean into taking control of my ID. Some time ago, I realized that there&amp;#x27;s no way for me to participate online, without things being attributed to me.&lt;p&gt;I learned this, by setting up a Disqus ID. I wanted to comment on a blog post, and started to set up an account.&lt;p&gt;After I started the process, it came back, with a list of random posts, from around the Internet (and some, &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; old), and said &amp;quot;Are these yours? If so, would you like to associate them with your account?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I freaked. Many of them were outright troll comments (I was not always the haloed saint that you see before you) that I had &lt;i&gt;sworn&lt;/i&gt; were done anonymously. They came from many different places (including DejaNews). I have no idea how Disqus found them.&lt;p&gt;Every single one of them was mine. Many, were ones that I had &lt;i&gt;sworn&lt;/i&gt; were dead and buried in a deep grave in the mountains.&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, I do not have a Disqus ID.&lt;p&gt;Being non-anonymous means that I need to behave myself, online. I come across as a bit of a stuffy bore, but I suspect my IRL persona is that way, as well.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s OK.</text></item><item><author>jmillikin</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  &amp;gt; I try to hide my real name whenever possible, out of an
  &amp;gt; abundance of caution. You can still find it if you search
  &amp;gt; carefully, but in today&amp;#x27;s hostile internet I see this kind
  &amp;gt; of soft pseudonymity as my digital personal space, and expect
  &amp;gt; to have it respected.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Without judging whether the goal is good or not, I will gently point out that your current approach doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be effective. A Google search for &amp;quot;BoppreH&amp;quot; turned up several results on the first page with what appears to be your full name, along with other results linking to various emails that have been associated with that name. Results include Github commits, mailing list archives, and third-party code that cited your Github account as &amp;quot;work by $NAME&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;As a purely practical matter -- again, not going into whether this is how things &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; be, merely how they do be -- it is futile to want the internet as a whole to have a concept of privacy, or to respect the concept of a &amp;quot;digital personal space&amp;quot;. If your phone number or other PII has ever been associated with your identity, that association will be in place indefinitely and is probably available on multiple data broker sites.&lt;p&gt;The best way to be anonymous on the internet is to be &lt;i&gt;anonymous&lt;/i&gt;, which means posting without any name or identifier at all. If that isn&amp;#x27;t practical, then using a non-meaningful pseudonym and not posting anything personally identifiable is recommended.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>RandomBK</author><text>No, but I also don&amp;#x27;t wear a mask that covers my face and I don&amp;#x27;t use a voice changer to scramble my speech.&lt;p&gt;In meatspace, people use different modes of identification than just a name, so names aren&amp;#x27;t as important to figuring out who&amp;#x27;s who.</text></comment>