Even Every doesn't like ChatGPT's memory feature.
Even Every doesn't like ChatGPT's memory feature. Context rot makes context that isn't gardened properly a liability, not a benefit.[by]
Topic: memory feature
14 chunks · 11 episodes
5.8x burst in 2025 Q2
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Peak quarter intensity across the topic's active span. Higher values mean attention was concentrated into a shorter stretch rather than spread evenly over time.
Topic summary
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A short read on the topic's time range, peak episode, and strongest associations. Use it as the quick orientation before drilling into examples.
- memory feature appears in 14 chunks across 11 episodes, from 2024-03-04 to 2026-03-02.
- Its densest episode is Bits and Bobs 5/5/25 (2025-05-05), with 3 observations on this topic.
- Semantically it travels with ChatGPT, Facebook, and sensitive data, while by chunk count it sits between lower pace and north star; its yearly rank moved from #138 in 2024 to #135 in 2026.
Over time
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Raw mentions over time. Use this to see absolute attention, not relative rank among all topics.
Observations
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The primary evidence view for this topic. Sort it chronologically when you want concrete examples behind the larger pattern.
Which would you be more embarrassed to have flashed up on screen: your gmail history, or your ChatGPT memory dossier?
...reful study and distillation. Email is the compost heap of your life. ChatGPT's memory feature contains constantly distilled insights about my life, continually refined and updated. The synthesis makes them higher potency and more likely to hav...
The News Feed betrayal effect: the dissonance that happens where sensitive data users added in one context is now used in another context.
... you've likely accumulated. ChatGPT had a few months pass before it flipped the memory feature on, which led to the "you are insecure about…" embarrassing reveal to friends. People forgot that their conversations that previously they'd never se...
Self perception and self-deception are easy to confuse.
Self perception and self-deception are easy to confuse. Therapy makes progress based on your ability to report what actually happened in your life. Your memories are pre-narrativized. You're the main character in your memories, so memories are stored with you being noble and correct. That's one reas
This week ChatGPT gaslit me about its memory feature.
This week ChatGPT gaslit me about its memory feature. I started off asking what it knew about me. I had to really twist its arm to get it to give me most of the things it knew. It included the amount of...
Ranking systems almost never expose the "knobs" to users.
...e me more bored." This is probably the logic behind OpenAI refusing to make the memory feature user controllable. Also, they think they can get away with it without too much uproar… … and they're probably right.
When you ask your friend to say something embarrassing about you in front of others they know how to say a thing that is embarrassing but makes you relatable.
...le. The classic trope of The Best Man speech. Someone I know was trying out the memory feature in ChatGPT with his coworkers and asked "tell me something embarrassing about myself." A real friend before saying something truly embarrassing shoul...
ChatGPT's new memory feature deliberately hides what it knows about you.
ChatGPT's new memory feature deliberately hides what it knows about you. That makes its context more of a dossier. See this tweet from someone who worked on it:[nm] "When we were...
ChatGPT's memory feature refusing to tell you what it knows about you is inherently creepy and lampshades the misaligned incentives.
ChatGPT's memory feature refusing to tell you what it knows about you is inherently creepy and lampshades the misaligned incentives. "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that." A chil...
The rate of people opening the equivalent of an incognito session in the tool is inversely proportional to their level of comfort with that system.
...portion of Temporary chats in ChatGPT changed after the introduction of the new memory feature.
The reaction to ChatGPT's new memory feature seems mixed.
The reaction to ChatGPT's new memory feature seems mixed. Chatbots previously had a fresh sheet of paper for each conversation. Kind of like a term limit; it can't develop plans, intentions, goa...
The new ChatGPT model can include memories from previous conversations.
...c, sensitive facts from months before into unrelated conversations. The ChatGPT memory feature has anti-tact. It's like a chief of staff that someone else is paying for, that you don't necessarily trust, that can't show you what it knows, or wh...
There's something clear about starting a separate conversation in e.g.
.... You can start a fresh conversation if you want fresh context. The new ChatGPT memory feature kind of confuses this feature. Now there are certain things that the LLM chooses to remember. What precisely it chooses to remember, and why, is nond...
A general design characteristic for things that have potential privacy or security implications: minimize the chance of a nasty surprise.
...his now with system-level microphone / camera indicator. ChatGPT's new personal memory feature doesn't do this. It's possible to ask it to save little memories about you (e.g. "I typically program in Typescript"). But it turns out the system al...