Descriptions:
How to use AI on sensitive files you can’t upload. I built an on-device Mac app that strips what a model doesn’t need and rebuilds a clean copy, so your private data never leaves your computer.
Get Airlock: https://natesnewsletter.substack.com/p/use-ai-sensitive-files?r=1z4sm5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
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What’s really happening when the AI you’re told to use meets the files you’re told not to upload?
The common story is that you just shouldn’t paste sensitive data into a chatbot. The real question is what a model actually needs to see, and who has to decide it.
In this video, I share the inside scoop on using AI without handing over the sensitive stuff:
– Why “don’t upload the file” stopped being useful advice
– How to separate what a task needs from what a file contains
– What Airlock strips out, and what it deliberately leaves alone
– Where a clean copy can safely go, and where it cannot
The upside is real work moving faster on private material, but a sanitized copy is not authorization, so you still read what leaves before it goes.
Chapters:
00:00 The file I would never upload
00:39 Why the warning stops too soon
01:16 Airlock demo and protected terms
02:39 Keep or cut: what the model actually needs
04:03 Rebuild the file instead of redacting it
04:50 Hand the clean copy to a frontier model
05:57 Why this suddenly feels urgent
07:45 What people in my community really do
09:26 Verizon on shadow AI at work
10:09 Security fatigue and better defaults
11:06 Redaction that keeps the work useful
12:44 Begin with the job
Listen to this video as a podcast.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0gkFdjd1wptEKJKLu9LbZ4
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ai-news-strategy-daily-with-nate-b-jones/id1877109372
