Memory!

October 17th, 2026| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

Recently, The Washington Post published an intriguing essay by Ariana Cha.

We retain only a fraction of what we encounter. Details disappear. Recollections blur. Memories can change as we revisit them.”

Can AI help compensate these natural shortcomings. Of course! With its prodigious information storage and equally incredible rapid information retrieval, it might help us. But therein also lies a problem and a potential risk. If AI gets it wrong, it might warp your recollections!

In one experiment conducted by the MIT Media Lab (yet to be published) 54 people were asked to write SAT-style essays on subjects such as what happiness means to them, employing either no online tools, or only Google search, or ChatGPT. Electrical activity in their brains was monitored and unaided writing had the greatest connectivity pattern between different areas of the brain. ChatGPT aid had the weakest, and Google fell somewhere in between.

So the worry for some researchers is not the cinematic nightmare of AI taking over humanity. Rather, it is about humanity ceasing to exercise abilities on tasks that can be done by AI.

Dr. Gideon Nave, of the University of Pennsylvania:

What we are more likely to see is humans starting to decay instead of AI taking over. I fear a world in which thinking becomes optional.”

Or, “de-skilling.” In fact, a study last year looked at 19 gastroenterologists and their evaluation of 1,500 colonoscopies. After the doctors began routinely using AI, their ability to detect precancerous growths on their own fell by about 20 percent. It seems to be a case of use that mental muscle or … lose it!

And if kids do this cognitive outsourcing even before some of those abilities are developed, they may never possess those key thinking capacities in the first place!

Of course, humans have been outsourcing thinking to all kinds of tools throughout their history: abacuses, watches, dictionaries, calculators, computers …. Except that, AI is not only producing information but also interpreting it for us. And users are remarkably willing to accept what it says. And all of that, with a great degree of confidence! AI meddling with memory!

In a recent study, 331 people watched a short animated video of a car striking a pedestrian. A day or two later, the participants read an AI-generated summary of the accident. For some, the summary accurately described a traffic sign in the video. For others, the AI identified the wrong sign. Among people who received the accurate summary, nearly 84% correctly remembered the sign. Among those who received the misleading version, just about 45% did. Very good when AI is right, but very bad when AI is wrong—the typical signature of cognitive surrender (giving up thinking to machines).

Not good news.

But God, he remembers, and remembers perfectly (and graciously does not remember).

Remember Your compassions, Yahweh,
and Your lovingkindnesses, for they are from eternity.
The sins of my youth and my rebellions, do not remember,
according to Your lovingkindness, You—do remember me,
because of Your goodness, Yahweh.
Psalm 25:6–7

And therefore, we remember him, and we cause him to be remembered.

I will cause Your name to be remembered in all generations;
therefore the peoples will give You thanks forever and always.
Psalm 45:17

And God blesses those who … remember!

And the lovingkindness of Yahweh is from forever unto forever,
upon those who fear Him,
and His righteousness to the children of children,
to those who keep His covenant
and those who remember His precepts to do them.
Psalm 103:17–18

SOURCES (of ideas, numbers, and words): The Washinton Post; Wharton School Research Papers