Humans are terrible at remembering things. We forget things over time; we don't remember them in the first place because we're not very good at paying attention either; we misremember things because of our inherent biases and the way we perceive the world. A lot of stuff happens and we don't retain it for very long.
Maybe ai can solve this problem. It seems we’re about to find out. Microsoft, for example, is betting big on Recall, an app that promises to use ai to collect, store, organize, and retrieve everything you do and see on your computer. (Imagine being able to ask your computer, “What was that article about bees I read the other day? What was the timeline it mentioned?”) At this year’s Google I/O, the most impressive ai demo was a way to remember where you left your glasses. Apple thinks you could use ai to make photo albums and even emotional videos to remember great moments. And companies like Notion and Dropbox are incorporating ai into their own tools to help you find and remember all your meetings and tasks. They all promise the same thing: Don’t worry about remembering things because your computer will do it for you. And it will do it faster and better.
In This episode of The VergecastWe spoke to one of the people who has been working on this problem for a long time: Dan Siroker, the CEO of ai/”>UnlimitedWe talk about what it takes to create a great memory tool, how we might use it in the future, and why it's so hard to get it right.
We also talk about the human side of all this: What changes in our lives when we stop forgetting things? Is remembering a friend’s birthday different when it’s actually an ai model doing it? And will these tools actually work outside of work? Tools like Limitless are emerging quickly and improving rapidly, and we’re going to have to figure out how to live with them.
If you want to learn more about everything we discussed in this episode, here are some links to get you started:
