There reasons AI has bad memory:
In [#1] we learned AI forgets after each chat. Now let’s go deeper: WHY does it happen?
AI memory isn’t like human memory. It has 3 hard limits:
Context Window = Short-term memory
Think of it like a whiteboard. GPT-4 has ~128,000 tokens of space.
That’s ~300 pages of text. Sounds big, right?
But once the board is full, AI erases the oldest stuff to make space.
That’s why it “forgets” what you said 50 messages ago.
No long-term storage
Humans have brains + notebooks. AI only has the whiteboard.
When you close the chat, the whiteboard gets wiped clean.
OpenAI doesn’t save your chats to “teach” the AI permanently.
Privacy reason + technical reason.
Session-based learning only
Each chat is a new session. AI starts from zero every time.
It can’t remember you from yesterday unless you paste the info again.
It’s not being rude. It literally has no memory between sessions.
How to fix it as a user:
Why this matters:
If you know AI has goldfish memory, you’ll stop expecting it to remember everything. You’ll feed it context upfront.
StemSocial question:
What’s your best trick for making AI “remember” important details?
Sources for StemSocial:
