👨‍🚀 New ChatGPT feature - upgrade or nightmare?

Hello AInauts,

Your favorite newsletter is back! Today with the focus topic: ChatGPT with an elephants memory? That's exactly what's happening right now! Our tests show: very helpful, but also scary. We have the perfect prompts for maximum added value for you - and at the same time we zoom in on the macro consequences for our AI future.

This is what we have in store for you:

• 🧠 New ChatGPT feature - upgrade or nightmare?

• 🔥 Harvard says: These are the top 10 AI use cases

• 🌊  AI-Fun: When the AI wave comes ... ride it!

Let's go

🧠 New ChatGPT feature - upgrade or nightmare?

ChatGPT now has an upgraded memory. Not just for the moment. Forever!

What Facebook has done with your interests and contacts and Google has done with your search queries, OpenAI is now doing with your inner life. It's the foundation for something radically new, extremely helpful - and potentially unsettling. More on this in a moment …

The new memory upgrade: Helpful? Yes. Disturbing? Definitely.

OpenAI upgraded its memory function a few days ago: ChatGPT now uses all your chats as context! Of course, not if you are in the EU (unless you use a VPN).

The official story: Everything becomes more fluid, more efficient, more personalized. ChatGPT gets to know you better over the course of your life.

But wait! What is not made a big deal of is the fact that it is no longer just about personalization. ChatGPT saves your thoughts, fears, dreams, doubts - everything you voluntarily type in. And it "never" forgets.

Not to mention that we will soon be sharing our screen so that ChatGPT can help us become more productive, better, smarter.

Memory is the ultimate competitive advantage for OpenAI. The longer you use it, the higher the switching costs, the harder it is for competitors to catch up.

No wonder, ChatGPT is trying to keep you by any means necessary! The product is already "sticky", said OpenAI's CFO recently. 800 million users (=10% of all people) confirm this. And perhaps there will soon be a social media network too - so that you can share the pictures from your new picture gallery quickly and easily.

This is how the digital brain works - it never forgets anything:

Memory operates on two closely interlinked levels:

1. Saved memories: Explicit facts that you consciously entrust to ChatGPT ("Save this to memory") or that it proactively classifies as important. This feature has been active for some time, including in the EU.

2. Chat history: The new game changer. ChatGPT accesses all your past conversations, recognizes patterns, nuances and builds a comprehensive profile of your thoughts in the background.

"Saved Memories" is available for everyone, the "Chat History" is only available for Plus and Pro accounts outside the EU.

The ultimate data set on the human condition ...

What is being created here is the ultimate data set on the human condition in general and yours in particular.

You used to be the product whose clicks were sold. As the saying goes: "If a product is free, you're not the customer!" Now it's no longer just about what you want, but why. Your digitized inner life becomes a commodity, you are the model yourself!

The chat creates an intimacy that a search bar can never offer. You voluntarily make your ambitions, traumas, inner conflicts, worries, etc. available, while the AI dynamically records and accompanies your development over time.

ChatGPT becomes your long-term conversation partner, combining diary, confessional, career coach and shadow self. OpenAI emphasizes that you as the user always have full control.

But the critical questions remain: Is deleted data really gone? Or does it live on in vector spaces, backups, training data?

The dystopian scenario: what could go wrong?

What could happen if a detailed log of our thoughts existed?

• Surveillance: A psychographic profile of a transparent user is the dream of every surveillance state.

• Manipulation: With deep knowledge of your triggers and desires, an ultra-effective persuasion machine can be built. Scalable psychological influence becomes real!

• Censorship: Stored thoughts are editable thoughts. A memory that can be changed is one that can be censored.

• Selling psychographic profiles: companies would pay huge sums to get access to these deep insights... the ChatGPT search function is already being optimized with it.

The utopian vision: And what if everything goes well?

But what if we stay in control and ChatGPT really becomes our ally? The more you reveal, the better the answers will be and the more efficiently you can use ChatGPT!

The opportunities are at least as impressive as the risks:

• The ultimate coach: A digital mentor who understands you better than you understand yourself, recognizes patterns in your decisions, and supports and pushes you to personal growth that you would never have thought possible.

• Learning turbo & knowledge hub: An assistant who knows exactly what you have already understood and where you are still stuck. Memory creates personalized learning in perfection - your brain in turbo mode!

• Creative superpower: A sparring partner who knows your entire creative history and can be a catalyst for real breakthroughs.

• Time machine and digital legacy: You can see how your views have evolved and have a tool for self-reflection. Your environment could interact with your digital self after your death.

Prompts: Your psychographic X-ray, intimate instead of just intelligent

We found a few prompts on X and experimented with them. IMPORTANT: Make sure to activate the feature in the settings first (or use a VPN)!

Now that you can remember everything I've ever shared with you: Show me my five biggest blind spots!

The answer was straight on! And ChatGPT has already positively influenced and supported us in this regard over the last few days.

But that's not all - here's another prompt to finish what we've started:

What topics of conversation, concepts, links, insights or hints have we left open or not fully covered in all our conversations so far? Make a list with short descriptions. Then suggest the next sensible steps in each case and explain the benefits of tackling them.

Last but not least:

Is there anything else you want to tell me before I go? What am I missing in life, considering what you know about me? You can speak openly and regardless of my feelings. 🖕💂‍♂️🛤️

And to end on a positive note:

What am I so good at that I don't even realize how special it is?

Our take: Are you ready for this "brave new world"?

No question, the new memory feature makes ChatGPT more powerful, more personal and the ultimate digital companion. Conversations become more fluid, results more relevant. It could be the starting point of a symbiosis that combines the best of man and machine and helps us to become the best version of ourselves.

But there is a price to pay: we are revealing our inner selves to a machine, giving the data to a company. We voluntarily provide the raw material for a psychographic profile of our inner life. It is up to each individual to decide how much they want to reveal. It could also save lives - or in this case: an organ.

However, we believe that in the not too distant future there will be local open source tools that will offer the same possibilities but give you full data sovereignty. Until then, we will use the possibilities of ChatGPT to our advantage.

P.S. Grok is following suit and now also has memories (as well as Vision and a Studio feature - analogous to ChatGPT's Canvas). Google's Gemini already introduced memory a few weeks ago. Your Choice: who do you trust, Sam, Sundar or Elon … 😕

🔥 Harvard says: These are the top 10 AI use cases!

Let's move on from memories to how "you" use AI! According to the Harvard Business Review, the most frequently used use case is currently therapy and emotional support.

This is actually a fascinating development: technical applications are being overtaken by emotional ones. People mainly use AI to become more human - and not more machine-like!

P.S.: In case you haven't heard: AI is now officially smarter than you (=higher IQ)!

🌊 AI-Fun: When the AI wave comes ... ride it!

This is what the result looks like when you ask ChatGPT to create a metaphor about AI and then turn it into an image.

We made it! But no need to be sad. The AInauts will be back soon, with new stuff for you.

Reto & Fabian from the AInauts

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