Beyond Note-Taking — My Journey with Obsidian and ChatGPT Towards a Personal AI

The picture below shows the relationship graph of my notes in Obsidian.

Introduction

In this article, I delve into my pursuit of a more interactive, and intelligent method to safeguard one’s intellectual legacy. Acknowledging the limitations of both traditional and digital tools like Obsidian, I explore the approach of constructing a personalized AI model trained on my own collection of notes. Inspired by the intelligent responses of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, I aim to develop a basic chat model capable of answering questions based on my writings, effectively facilitating a dialogue with my own ideas.

We gather a lot of notes

As committed learners, scientists, creators, and professionals, we are constantly engaged in the process of gathering and processing information while writing notes, articles, and books. These intellectual pursuits can often amount to 8 hours or more each day, resulting in a vast sea of concepts, ideas, and raw written materials.

Personally, I take massive amounts of notes, write articles, work on never-finished books as well as write letters to family and friends.

In eras past, diaries, scientific notebooks, and letters were the vessels of choice to capture and preserve these insights. An example could serve the prodigious correspondence of Charles Darwin, who penned over 10,000 letters! Today, the need to write has not waned, even if the media evolved.

Writing is not enough

Yet, writing down thoughts is only part of the equation. To elevate our critical and creative thinking, we must find ways to connect the dots between concepts and recognize emerging patterns.

With time, however, even the most firmly grasped knowledge can slip away from our minds. Add to that the ephemeral nature of digital information: computers grow obsolete, memory storage devices fail, and web platforms fall out of favor, taking our thoughts with them into oblivion.

Preserving our intellectual legacy in the form of books is one route, albeit one taken by a few. Letter writing, too, is an art that allows the preservation of thoughts while benefiting both the writer and the recipient. However, the quest for a more dynamic, accessible, and sustainable way of preserving our knowledge continues.

Recently, I turned to Obsidian, an intriguing note-taking application. Obsidian’s compelling feature is its ability to visualize, or graph, the relationships between notes, each represented in an easily accessible Markdown file type. But as useful as it is, Obsidian is not a sophisticated partner.

Interactivity

Writing has always felt like a dialogue to me, an exchange of ideas not just with the reader but also with the text itself. Yet, wouldn’t it be truly magical if our writings could respond to us, and perhaps, even to our future generations, when we are no longer available to answer their questions?

Enter AI

ChatGPT, an advanced AI model developed by OpenAI, has shown promise in this realm with its astonishingly intelligent responses. I always had a wish, if not means, to harness the principles that govern the training of AI like ChatGPT and adapt them to my own corpus of written works.

My aim is not grandiose. A rudimentary chat model capable of answering questions based on my writings would be a successful first step.

Conclusion

Imagine the possibilities of a personal AI that understands and embodies your worldview, assisting in not just preserving but also interacting with your intellectual legacy!

Looking ahead, I plan to chronicle my progress in this endeavor and share my insights with you.
I also intend to create a public code repository on GitHub. My hope is that this journey will inspire others, especially Obsidian, or Obsidian plugin developers, to explore the potential of personalized AI for lifelong learning and intellectual legacy preservation.

Feel free to share your thoughts with me, either via LinkedIn (the link is below) or, even better, through traditional mail.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully,

Uki D. Lucas
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ukidlucas/

Read my previous post “Why Your Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard: The Resurgence of Handwritten Notes”