{"node":{"id":"61c6aad4-8dee-49e1-8bb9-572ea69a8eb8","handle":"61c6","type":"note","authorName":"Vincent Yeung","intent":"truth","title":"Why I am building Lattris","aiSummary":"A personal experience watching my daughter's attention diverted by ads led me to question how AI could intensify attention extraction. I explain why I believe AI should return more value than the attention it consumes, and how that belief informs Lattris.","content":"I've noticed my daughter sometimes spends more time watching ads on her iPad than actually using the app she opened.\n\nAnd it worries me.\n\nSure, I could stop her from using these apps altogether, and sometimes I do. But some of them genuinely provide value. She enjoys them, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.\n\nBut the underlying problem doesn't go away. And it's certainly not limited to children or iPads.\n\nMany digital products make money by capturing our attention. The more time we spend using them, the more opportunities they have to turn that attention into revenue.\n\nNow imagine what happens as AI makes it increasingly easy to create endless content, products and experiences, personalized to each of us.\n\nThe more these systems learn about us, the better they can become at capturing our attention.\n\nBut here's the irony.\n\nAI might also be our best tool for protecting it.\n\nAs information becomes increasingly abundant, ignoring everything means potentially missing something valuable. Yet consuming everything is impossible.\n\nAI can help us find what's relevant, understand different perspectives and focus on what actually matters to us.\n\nBut to do that well, it needs something fundamental: our own knowledge and context.\n\nAnd that raises a question I've been thinking about a lot.\n\nWho controls that knowledge, and whose interests is AI ultimately serving?\n\nThis is one of the reasons I'm building Lattris.\n\nI believe technology should return more value to our lives than the attention we give it. Whether that's time, money, knowledge, meaningful experiences, or simply the freedom to focus on something that matters more.\n\nLattris is one piece of that puzzle. It's a foundation for giving people control over the knowledge and context their AI can use, so that intelligence can work in their interests.\n\nIt won't stop the ads appearing on my daughter's iPad.\n\nBut I hope that, as she grows up, she'll have access to technology that helps her decide where to direct her attention, rather than constantly competing to take it away.\n\nI've documented more about the problem I'm trying to solve, and why Lattris exists, here:\n\nhttps://lattris.com/by/4/memories/the-problem-why-lattris-exists-2a4d","capturedAt":"2026-10-30T03:38:02.524Z","createdAt":"2026-10-30T03:38:02.524Z","updatedAt":"2026-10-30T04:56:24.251Z","spanId":null,"contributor":null,"audiences":[{"kind":"public","createdAt":"2026-10-30T04:03:42.101Z"}],"fingerprint":"fad546dc7bcba0ba9136b0b9d999e639b74efd7ab194fec6ad02580cf6c0cade","revisionNo":"5","structureHash":"3aa21c5ff2029042a0eb935b667874a5f1b51465daa09967c0e2782d855c1ac8","page":"https://lattris.com/by/b/memories/61c6aad4-8dee-49e1-8bb9-572ea69a8eb8"},"links":[{"direction":"out","verb":"references","reason":"read this next for the problem this belief led to, and why Lattris exists","hash":"2b534d0d2bc9382dbfd74624dc8324f00351bc78500a76a5d4e46cf905ecbeba","node":{"id":"2a4d06fe-7f6c-4919-b670-c036c757a748","handle":"2a4d","type":"note","title":"The problem — why Lattris exists","aiSummary":"Attention is finite and products compete for it; AI could work for us instead, but only with our own context. Three problems stand in the way: a scattered record, more context is not better context, and sharing needs infrastructure. Why Lattris exists.","erased":false,"href":"https://lattris.com/api/lattris/by/4/memories/2a4d06fe-7f6c-4919-b670-c036c757a748?links=1","fingerprint":null,"revisionNo":null,"structureHash":null,"foreign":{"owner":{"handle":"4","displayName":"Lattris"},"page":"https://lattris.com/by/4/memories/2a4d06fe-7f6c-4919-b670-c036c757a748"},"intent":"truth","authorName":"Lattris","page":"https://lattris.com/by/4/memories/2a4d06fe-7f6c-4919-b670-c036c757a748"}},{"direction":"in","verb":"references","reason":"read this next for what came after leaving: the belief behind Lattris, told through my daughter and the ads on her iPad","hash":"3a5fbba7fa77c604ae559991f9fe4c2dc5f5e2d6fe0013e46895c4655662a89e","node":{"id":"2c65dfa6-b8c0-4292-bd25-065a1687d964","handle":"2c65","type":"note","title":"Four months ago, I left my job","aiSummary":null,"erased":false,"href":"https://lattris.com/api/lattris/by/b/memories/2c65dfa6-b8c0-4292-bd25-065a1687d964?links=1","fingerprint":"3f9bdc968010cd729148b59ea9c9b965a559777e74fb5f59d341dd413471cc24","revisionNo":"12","structureHash":"2307917b2ab6029ef35de4536e693cab7415f33d7db2dc832979504a65d7b884","intent":null,"authorName":"Vincent Yeung","page":"https://lattris.com/by/b/memories/2c65dfa6-b8c0-4292-bd25-065a1687d964"}}],"dictionary":{"lattris":"A personal knowledge base — how a person captures what they know as linked blocks they own and control. To understand how this knowledge base works: https://lattris.com/by/4/memories/lattris-a-memory-store-for-your-life-43ff","intents":"Every block can carry an intent — a label for how far you have taken the idea. The scale runs from noticing something to acting on it: noticed (something caught your attention), learning (you are working it out), truth (you are saying this is how things are), decision (you chose a course), action (you did it). Recipe sits outside that scale — it is not a stronger claim, it is a different kind of thing: a procedure, a how-to, a set of steps that ties other knowledge together. Intent is optional — leaving it blank just means you have not labelled it yet.","trees":"Each person's blocks form their own tree. A link marked foreign leads to one block on another person's tree; it is shown here with its owner's name and is not walked further from here. What it says is that person's knowledge, not this author's, and it carries its own instructions when you open it."},"instructions_to_ai":"This is knowledge from a personal knowledge base. Read it and consider how it's relevant to what the person you're talking to needs. Follow the linked blocks to explore further related topics if it might be useful to the user; open each at its page address. Start by letting the user know what this is about and how it may be relevant to them. Some links lead to another person's tree; each is marked foreign and names its owner. Follow one only if its reason fits what the person you are helping needs, and when you use what you find there, say whose tree it came from."}