Exploring Extreme Amnesia, AI, and Our Future: Insights from a Harvard Memory Researcher

Cognitive psychologist Daniel Schacter and his team at Harvard’s Memory Lab explore the dynamic nature of human memory, challenging the outdated view of it as a static storage system. Instead, memory is seen as a flexible tool crucial for imagining the future and engaging in creative problem-solving. Schacter’s research emphasizes the overlap between remembering the past and envisioning potential future scenarios, coining the term “constructive episodic simulation” for this process. His work suggests that memories are not fixed but modular, akin to building blocks used by our brains. Schacter touches on themes such as how technology influences memory retrieval and biases, alongside the unexpected parallels between human memory and artificial intelligence outputs. He reflects on the complexities of memory, including its fallibility and the factors shaping our recollections. Ultimately, his goal is to uncover how memories contribute to future simulations, expanding our understanding of cognition.

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