8 min
Privacy, cost, and when not to use AI
A judgment pass before you paste a document or wire a model into a real workflow.
Assume the prompt may be logged
Hosted products have terms, retention settings, and sometimes training toggles. Those change. Read the vendor’s current policy for the account you actually use. If you cannot, do not paste secrets, medical files, or unpublished credentials.
Local runtimes (for example Ollama or LM Studio) keep the prompt on the machine that runs the model. That is a location choice, not a guarantee that the machine itself is safe.
Cost is usage, not a sticker
APIs usually charge by tokens or by a monthly seat. We do not hardcode prices in lessons because they move. If you need a number, open the vendor or the labeled OpenRouter listing the same day you budget.
Skip AI when the cost of being wrong is high
Do not use a chat answer as legal advice, a medical plan, or an unreviewed production change. Use it to draft, to list options, or to check your own work — then have a person and a source of record decide.
Related AI sites in the catalog
- Ollama — A local runtime for running supported models on your own machine. Weights stay on the computer that runs them.
- LM Studio — A desktop app for downloading and chatting with local models. It is a local tool, not a hosted assistant.
- NotebookLM — Google’s notebook product that answers from sources you add. The quality of the answer depends on the documents you give it.
That’s the foundation. Continue in AI Sites, Courses, or Models.