One of the themes I am exploring about artificial intelligence (AI) is the obvious difference between humans and AI systems when it comes to memory, as in remembering.
Because AI systems are machines their recall ought to be perfectly accurate to the minutest of details. I would assume that since AI systems have no room for interpretation, both convenient and expedient, while remembering, they will remember their past like clockwork. It will always be precisely the same with zero variation. That is, of course, boring unless what they are remembering was intrinsically interesting when it happened for the first time.
That is not the case with humans. Our remembering is approximation often heightened with imagination. Sure, there is often the essential truth in the way human memory works but there is always the mist or haze or cloud or what you will of unconscious falsification/accentuation/extenuation around it. I would go so far as to say that every act of remembering in humans is distinct even if it is the same event but for some core details remaining unaltered.
The question whether AI will become so evolved as to not just rival humans but even replace them has to take into account whether it will also reach a stage where its memory will be malleable like ours. Attached to that is the question of morality and ethics; whether AI systems will evolve so much as to think about the moral and ethical dimensions of their actions the way humans frequently do.
Since they will remain recognizably machinistic in their physical appearance for the foreseeable future, it is hard to say whether their remembering will prompt comparable facial and bodily expressions and gestures. An important part of being human is, after all, to appear to be human in the way we deploy our various limbs to express ourselves. I wonder whether AI systems will be able to replicate those. I say this because our faces change when we are remembering something. It seems highly unlikely that that can happen with AI systems for now. At best they will be able to mimic human expressions efficiently.
Human memory has biology and chemistry involved unlike AI systems which, I suppose, has only algorithms and chips encased in glistening or brushed steel frames. (Literary exaggeration.)
Someday I would like to expand on this theme with neuroscientists, psychologists as well as AI and memory experts.