Beyond AgeTech, ChatGPT’s memory feature moves personalization forward

Conversation is becoming more interesting with ChatGPT 4.0.  For one thing, with its memory feature enabled, it easily inhales everything the conversationalist has ever said online, or even excludes the speaker’s previous remarks upon request. How can this be helpful to older adults? A tool that learns from multiple sources, aggregates if desired into a summary, incorporates links to sources, and then remembers the whole interchange – maybe that moves it into another tier of utility. The conversation could have been about travel possibilities, about transportation options, about more comfortable walking shoes – or brainstorming places to go on a future trip. Next interaction has remembered context – do you want to hear what’s new in locations you viewed previously?

By saving the chats, follow-on conversations are possible.  And you can get reasonable comparisons about differences between technology (Siri versus Alexa versus Grok). Asking about personalization, the tool is aware of some applications that offer personalization. This is where software needs to go – with our permission of course, and paid upgrades.  ChatGPT 4.0 has a $20/month subscription fee.  Maybe it’s not worth it for people who aren’t researchers.

Personalization sounds like a good idea…We want our interactions to be remembered if the experience is more convenient the next time -- personalization of a chat tool makes sense. Customizations of settings in a car when there are multiple drivers – makes sense.  Remembered logins to health portals – make sense when always using the same device. Remembered information that cannot be updated when a mistake is found – for example, in a UPS delivery that went to a previous remembered address, make no sense.

…Profiles that can enable personalization may be a better idea.  Note – none of this is ‘AgeTech’ – it’s just tech we can and need to use -- think of it as AllTech. With a profile and the owner’s permission, adding memory and context, tech use could someday be streamlined from a single safe (!) source for all ages. And given the data that is available about us, perhaps in a health system, care delivery itself can be better personalized – face recognition could (someday) completely eliminate the clipboard, remember the last conversation with the clinician and follow-up the next time, versus starting over again.