GPT-4 Has the Memory of a Goldfish
Large language models know a lot but can’t remember much at all.
By this point, the many defects of AI-based language models have been analyzed to death—their incorrigible dishonesty, their capacity for bias and bigotry, their lack of common sense. GPT-4, the and most advanced such model yet, is already being to the same scrutiny, and it still seems to in pretty much all the ways earlier models did. But large language models have another shortcoming that has so far gotten relatively little attention: their shoddy recall. These multibillion-dollar programs, which require of energy to run, may now be able to code websites, plan vacations, and draft company-wide emails in the style of William Faulkner. But they
