Hey, what’s up?
Today, I wanted to share my thoughts about Microsoft Recall, a newly announced AI feature for Windows 11 that records everything that you do.
My current position is that I’m already trying to escape most things related to Microsoft and large tech corporation, but I wanted to talk about it because computers and AI are very interesting to me, so it is ultimately a quite relevant topic.
Let’s go in!
1- WHAT IS MICROSOFT RECALL?
Microsoft Recall is a new AI-feature that is going to be released soon on Windows 11. It will have the ability to record and take notes of everything that you do on your computer. This way, if you forget something (like the location of a certain file that you saved, for example) or if you need assistance in any way, then your computer will be able to “recall” things for you.
The way I see it is that it seems quite similar to your browsing history but for your whole computer and behaviors. As someone that spends a lot of time on my computer, I don’t really know if that’s a feature that I actually need.
In my case, having an uncluttered space, organized folders and computer is very important to me. Usually, I don’t think about going backward, I think about going forward. And if I actually need to search something on my computer like a file or whatever, I usually know exactly where it is, or I find it using the “search option”.
But I understand that Microsoft Recall records also your behaviors and everything that you do, so it goes beyond just searching a bunch of files. I think the purpose of Recall is to be an extension of yourself, if that makes sense. Similar to a phone but on another level.
But as of right now, I don’t exactly know the use case of this feature unless you have poor memory or something like Alzheimer, but we’ll see how that goes.
2- PRIVACY
You don’t have to be a technical genius to understand that this is a huge privacy vulnerability. With this announcement, Microsoft literally said that your computer will be monitoring everything that you’re doing.
It’s very similar to someone was always watching over your shoulder to see what’s your doing.
It means that it will be clearly recording your passwords, banking and financial information, medical details, social media and relationships, etc. Your Windows computer will literally know everything about.
That’s a massive privacy breach. You don’t want hackers and even the other people around you to have access to this. If you’re using a shared computer, forget completely about this feature.
That being said, they also announced that everything will be stored and done locally on your computer. I think this really has to be verified because large tech corporations like Microsoft aren’t really know to care about your privacy.
They usually take all the data and information they can from you because they can resell them to third parties and advertisement.
Windows already requires an online account to login, OneDrive is always working in the background to sync all your file with the cloud, and I’m not even talking about the hidden telemetry that we aren’t seeing.
Even if it is truly stored and encrypted locally, for how long it is going to be? One day, will they flip the switch and say that they need to collect more data to “improve the user experience”? Wouldn’t be surprised if that happens.
3- HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS
To make these new AI features possible, it is said that we will need new hardware called NPU (Neural Processing Unit) that is going to be integrated in the CPU. These NPU are optimized for machine learning and artificial intelligence. Microsoft is going to use them to create “Copilot Plus PC”.
Here, I’m not too surprised. AI has been released for a while now, and this is something that has been talked many times before. The only thing that I’d like to say is the pricing for this new hardware. Is it actually something that most people can afford at a consumer level? We’ll see.
That being said, from my experience, GPU can already handle a bunch of AI very nicely. At least, from my own usage. I’ve been able to use GPT4ALL and Automatic1111 to run AI locally on my computer without many problems. But not every computer and laptops have a GPU.
One thing to keep in mind is that GPUs are good at processing graphics. You might be able to get away using a GPU for AI for a while. But as technology evolve, I’m assuming that NPUs are going to become mandatory for more recent computers.
Microsoft will use these new chips to run AI and I think more softwares and video games will start using this new technology.
I don’t think I’ll be rushing to purchase one of these new computers. I feel like the one that I currently have is still very good enough.
4- LINUX: PRIVATE, FREE & OPEN SOURCE
A few months ago, I made the decision to switch from Microsoft Windows to Linux mostly because of these privacy issues, and I think it will be getting worse.
Linux is an alternative to Windows that is free, open source, private and doesn’t collect data from you.
I think that Linux is ready to be used for desktop and if Microsoft worries you, then I would invite you to switch as well. I already made videos on how you can make that transition easier for yourself.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Microsoft is introducing a new AI feature that records everything that you do. I’m very worried about the privacy aspect of these new features, and I think it is reinforcing the decision that I made to switch to Linux a few months ago. I think it will keep getting worse.
New AI chips called NPU will also be introduced to optimize the new artificial intelligence features which makes a lot of sense. I’m currently able to do everything that I need a with a decent GPU, but I’m assuming that these new chips will be a transition that we’ll all have to do.
That being said, if you’re outside the Windows ecosystem, I don’t see any point in rushing getting these new chips because it will take some time for things to evolve in that aspect.
So that’s pretty much it, I hope this was helpful to you. If this blog was valuable to you, you could consider following me on social media and if you have any thoughts or comments, you can leave them below.
I hope this helps, peace!
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