Ever ask ChatGPT or Gemini a question only to get a completely off-track reply? Don’t worry, it’s not you. It’s just a little chemical imbalance in your AI-bot’s short-term memory.
Let’s break down what’s really happening inside that digital brain and why even the smartest AI can sometimes lose the plot.
Why do AI bots forget chats and get confused?
Every LLM model, from ChatGPT to Gemini, has a limit within which it can store data, called the context window which is measured in tokens. It is basically the amount of data AI can take when generating an answer.
When you put give your AI bot a prompt, it convert your words into tokens, basically, breaking it down into chunks of text it can process.
Both your prompt and the AI’s replies consume these tokens. Once the conversation or chat hits this limit, some parts of the conversation get automatically dropped from memory.
The “Lost-in-the-Middle” problem
Here’s where things get even more interesting. AI models tend to pay the most attention to the start and end of a conversation, while often ignoring the middle.
This phenomenon is known as the “lost-in-the-middle” problem. Think of it like a student who remembers the first and last chapters of a textbook but blanks out on everything in between. So, when you drop important details midway through a long chat, the AI might simply forget.
Why can’t AI have infinite memory?
You must be wondering, “Why can’t my
AI bot have infinite memory?” Well, that’s not practical. A larger context window requires huge computing power and storage. It would be like keeping all the editions of all the books, from all languages that have ever been written, stored in your brain. Things will get very expensive very quickly. Plus, any attempt to navigate through your brain’s storage will be slow and inefficient.
The Bottom line
As mentioned earlier, every LLM model, like ChatGPT and Gemini, is incredibly powerful but it is limited by its context window, which decides how much of your chat it can actually remember. So, next time your AI assistant seems a bit forgetful, just remind yourself that your AI is having a minor memory loss issue.
