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by thiht 753 days ago
> good Mac-centric alternatives for folks who don't want OpenAI snooping around their terminal

iTerm, since they don't do that. Just keep it disabled.

Unless you consider any terminal that lets you make network calls to OpenAI = OpenAI snooping around.

2 comments

I don't think "it's fine, I unchecked the OpenAI checkbox" is going to make my HIPAA/SOC2 auditor very happy
You don't "uncheck the OpenAI checkbox". You check the box if you want to use it, and you provide an API key. Hooking genAI up to your terminal is sort of one of the obvious use cases for this tech, and they're just providing you with the hooks to use it if you like.

As much as I dislike the current trend of "AI ALL THE THINGS", I don't think supporting it as a completely optional feature is in any way problematic.

> You don't "uncheck the OpenAI checkbox". You check the box if you want to use it

There is no checkbox for that, at least I can't find any and I've been looking quite hard.

There is:

- a text input field for the OpenAI API key (by default empty)

- a text input field named "AI Prompt"

- a "Model" dropdown (which doesn't have a "None" option)

- ...and a Token Limit number input field

...that's it. It also doesn't say anywhere that the key field being empty means that the feature is disabled.

A better UI design would have been a checkbox at the top that's disabled by default, and all the detailed UI fields being greyed out and disabled until that checkbox is enabled.

Checking the box is not enough. You also need to provide an API key for iTerm do be able to do any kind of uploads to OpenAI.

If your auditor does not believe that with the checkbox unchecked and no API key provided, iTerm will not talk to OpenAI, how do they believe any other software you run does not secretly upload stuff to OpenAI?

What's different between a piece of software claiming to not support OpenAI at all vs. one that claims to support OpenAI if the user provides an API key in light of the possibility that both might be lying (if that's an auditors concern)

With iTerm your auditors at least get to check the source code...

It is opt-in, not opt-out. You do not have to uncheck anything. If you do not put the effort to activate it and provide an api key, it will not do anything.
This is a firewall issue, not a software issue. If your auditor think you shouldn't call OpenAI servers, they should ask the network team to set firewall rules in place.
Get a better auditor then.
Oh no, you just "snooped" on GP by reading and answering their question.