The memory that felt like a recording and was not

In 2011 the psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris surveyed a representative sample of about 1,500 American adults about memory. About 63% agreed that human memory works like a video camera, accurately recording what we see and hear so we can review it later.

Research points the other way. After the space shuttle Challenger exploded in January 1986, the psychologists Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch asked students the next day to write how they heard the news. About two and a half years later they asked again. Many accounts had changed a lot, and some students were confident in versions that did not match what they had written at the time.

This matters in court. In the United States, mistaken eyewitness identification played a part in most of the wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project.

Memory stores pieces, such as the gist, some details and the feelings, and fills in gaps each time we recall an event. Later information, other people's stories and our own expectations can blend in without us noticing. How confident we feel and how accurate we are can drift apart.

Memory is still useful and often right about the main points. It is just less reliable for exact details, especially after a long time or many retellings.

The AI angle: chatbots also produce fluent, confident answers by filling gaps with what seems likely. Like a confident memory, a confident AI answer needs checking against a record.

The idea behind this caseLesson: Why AI makes things up →

1. 1Write down important details soon after an event, such as a meeting, an accident or a medical visit.
2. 2Treat your own confident memory as a strong clue that may still be wrong on details.
3. 3Do not judge an eyewitness, or yourself, by how certain they sound.
4. 4Check AI answers against a record or source in the same way you would check a memory.