Building The Machine 19: AI Memory and Lock-In Effects
Now that ChatGPT can remember and see across posts, what does it mean for keeping users?
A quick note on my writing - I am going to be publishing more here. At the push from my friend
, Substack has become an incredible place to write, publish, and grow. It is a stark change from self-hosting and publishing on my own blog, but as I said in my first post, I want to continue to learn and experiment.AI Memory and Lock-In Effects ✍️
This morning, I was assisting a portfolio company in crafting a concise and clear update intended for investors, partners, and prospective customers. The update required brevity, clarity, and directness to effectively convey its message. My approach to enhancing the content involved a combination of methods: utilizing voice-to-text capture to verbalize and streamline ideas, synthesizing key points into succinct bullets, and refining thoughts through collaboration with ChatGPT. As a collaborative writer and builder, I find that verbalizing ideas is beneficial, though it's not always feasible to bounce ideas off someone in real-time. The emergence of AI tools has proven to be invaluable in augmenting and refining my writing process.
Today, I realized that ChatGPT now has memories across posts.
In April 2024 ChatGPT had this to say about how it works
Persistent Memory: When you tell me something you’d like me to remember, I can store this information and recall it in future conversations. This helps in maintaining context and continuity, making our interactions more personalized and efficient.
Privacy and Control: You have control over this memory. You can ask me to forget certain things I’ve remembered or to review what I currently remember.
Dynamic Updating: As our conversations evolve, I can update or modify the memory based on new information you provide. This ensures that the memory remains accurate and relevant to your needs.
Contextual Usage: The information I remember is used to provide more tailored responses and suggestions based on your specific context and preferences.
I have been thinking about this concept for awhile and 2018 I described it as Algorithmic Lock In as it related to Spotify. The more you use it, the better it becomes. Its very hard to migrate your taste profile once it has been established.
The other way I have thought about this is Data Exhaust. Similarly this comes OUT of a service you use.
My articulation of this from 2008 was:
“The more data left behind, that can be harvested, the better the underlying network.”
This is not to say that the data left behind can’t be harvested for evil instead of good, it just means that the lock in effect is real.
This brings us to my point today, which is that ChatGPT is now building a user data moat.
The more you use the OpenAI platform, the more data it ingests about you. You can control, edit, omit, and contour this information (as described above) as you see fit. This is a fascinating new way to think about the moat of a AI business. As AI companies are struggling to support the huge compute power necessary to run against smaller revenues than expected, the more “sticky” the platform the better chance they have of succeeding. In this NYTimes article it is described that startups in the space have little chance to succeed without the financial support and partnership of a large platform in the space – enter Microsoft, Meta, and others getting into the game. This David+Goliath match makes for a very deep pocketed, and now potentially deeper moat standard.
As ChatGPT continues to build and iterate, there is a high likelihood that my past actions and energy put into it will benefit me more – thus justifying the subscription even further. AI is getting smarter everyday, and the AI you use everyday is getting smarter for you to use. Churn of AI services is real, but so are the lock-in effects for the memories you are giving your AI service today.
4 Links 4 Today 📖
1️⃣ Did you know that airports that are searching for weapons and bombs in luggage and in carry ons are not required to check for cold hard cash? How about to the tune of MILLIONS brought through terminals that are most definitely by money laundering? Well read on friend.
🔗 Billions in Dirty Money Flies Under The Radar
2️⃣ I have been thinking about self-hosted security and how hard it would be to build. What happens if something gets lost? How do you recover? What happens if you die? I am not sure the answer but seeing this post kept me thinking about it.
🔗 Lastpass hackers get in through employee
3️⃣ Google paid $26 billion to be the default search engine in 2021 across basically every platform. How much is that worth to a brand? To revenue? To users? When Google bought YouTube back in the day, they didn’t just buy an app they bought a category: Video. When I see this spend I see a bargain
4️⃣ I love that I discovered this Goodhart’s Law: “when a feature of the economy is picked as an indicator of the economy, then it inexorably ceases to function as that indicator because people start to game it.” Which is an amazing way to say that stated a numeric goal makes it less relevant to the team/system/foundation chasing it.
Tools I use 🛠️
I have been a paying subscriber of Dropbox for at least a decade. They semi-recently added Dropbox capture which is a welcomed tool to take screenshots and have them automatically in your clipboard. The added benefit is a Loom like feature that lets you record video, with you in it, for a quick screen share. This becomes an easy to access URL that you can share to show someone something. Better than a meeting and faster than an expiation, video is the ultimate show don’t tell. Dropbox capture makes this process a little bit easier.
Celebrate your wins 🏆
1-1-1 journaling is extremely helpful. I now use a mac keyboard shortcut replacement - meaning anywhere I type “111” it gives me my simple prompt:
Win tension gratitude like so:
This way I can type this anywhere, and quickly give a Win, Tension, Gratitude for the day.
Thoughts on this as a newsletter vs. a blog? Its been almost 20 years of blogging so thoughts welcomed…