are we still friends Knowing the status of a relationship depends on tracking changes. What have we done together recently? Was it fun or were we fighting? Admittedly, it can be very difficult to keep track of the changes in relationships when you are in high school. But we are always working to update our relationship status.
Memory and relationship renewal
One of the most amazing human qualities memory It is our ability to follow recent experiences as well as to know the general context. I have argued that this is essential for maintaining and tracking relationships of all kinds (Hyman, 1999). We need to change our memories and adapt to our social groups. We also decide which stories to share with each other based on how long it has been since we last saw each other (Drivdal et al., 2014). When talking with the family at dinner, we talk about what happened each day. When we catch up with friends we haven’t seen in months, we share the highlights of that period.
Knowing what is considered recent depends on the context. Humans are amazingly good at this. How good are we at keeping up with recent events and conversations, especially when it becomes clear that someone is losing their ability? Talking circles appear in Alzheimer’s disease because no one can follow what was said to you recently – sometimes up to five minutes ago – and sometimes a little more. But for the rest of us, we usually know when to repeat a previous conversation. We updated our relationship status.
Where should we go for dinner?
Autobiographical memory allows us to update in areas beyond the relational state. You want to know where your car is now, not where it was last week or where it usually is (da Costa Pinto & Baddeley, 1991; Hyman et al., 2013). Our ability to remember recent events is demonstrated in a variety of experiences (Baddeley & Hitch, 1977). When we think about this kind of event, everything from the last movie we saw to the place we went on our last vacation easily comes to mind. Old memories tend to blur into one general type of event – going to the movies or going on vacation.
The ability to remember recent events is called the recency effect. Modern effects allow us to solve one of life’s biggest problems: where should we go for dinner? We often think about places we have been recently. We might want to go back, but more likely we’ve decided to do something else. Of course, we sometimes return to the same places. When I meet a good friend for a beer, we usually go to our favorite brewery.
Updating knowledge in a changing world
Not only do we update our personal experience, but we also update our knowledge about the state of the world. We keep track of who the current president is. We have some thoughts on current news. We know about new music releases from our favorite artists. If something new and important happens, we will follow this information.
Updating knowledge is especially important for science. Sometimes when we report new findings, we reject old ideas. Of course, it is difficult to let go of old theories and beliefs. Many of these ideas hang in textbooks, the popular press, and in public belief. A zombie idea is something that is known to be wrong, but no matter how many times new information tries to kill it.
When I teach, I often teach an old idea and then describe new evidence that disproves that theory. We then discuss our current theories. And I always note that the next set of research may require us to update our understanding of the world again. This is the heart of the scientific method.
AI and knowledge innovation
On this thought, I was curious how some of the current AI Large language models manage knowledge updating. I am interested in situations where there is an old idea or theory that refutes new evidence. AI systems are built with a lot of data. They use models that create text based on the whole body of knowledge. What happens when you ask about some of these topics? I tried several.
First, I tried: Does culture affect the perception of the Müller-Layer illusion. It is a classic illusion that lines of the same length are different based on the arrows at the end of the lines (see example). The old idea was that culture matters. People who did not grow up in a context with right angles did not understand this illusion – it was called the Carpenter’s World Hypothesis. When I asked Google, the AI response offered this as a standard explanation. But more recent evidence suggests that the illusion works for all people, even with curves instead of angles. It appears in some unusual animals. Google AI even referenced a recent paper by Amir and Firestone (2025) that summarizes this new understanding, but did not actually use the current understanding.
I tried several others with different AI responses. It did not go well with the zombie idea that listening to music makes children smarter, the infamous Mozart effect (Mehr et al., 2013; Steele, et al., 1999). Google AI knew it wasn’t growing reconnaissancebut thought it increased other cognitive abilities. This worked better with the zombie idea that the release of the rage would be reduced aggression. But there is substantial and long-standing evidence against this false claim.
I suspect that AI systems have problems updating knowledge. When a large amount of information is based on an old but discredited idea, the AI can stick with a more popular but discredited answer. Admittedly, people struggle with this too. But in these cases, the AI continues to promote zombie ideas. AI may make it harder for us to update our knowledge of the world based on newer and better evidence.
Updating knowledge and memory is an important human ability. Updates allow us to update our friendships and keep track of the current state of the world. From knowing where our car is to knowing who our friends are, we need to constantly improve our knowledge.
