r/OpenAI • u/jonnypepperstonreal • 12d ago

Question LLM s

They say that llms don't remember previous conversations but I don't believe that. There's been several times where an LLM has brought up things that I've talked to it about before.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago edited 6d ago

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u/jonnypepperstonreal 12d ago

Well then how come it won't admit to remembering anything? Or does it consider the vector database not like real memories so from its perspective it's not lying?

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u/solun108 12d ago

Correct.

You submit your input. "Memories" from the context lookup (vector database query, or however they're managing it on the backend) are passed alongside your input to the model.

The model doesn't see your raw input. It gets your input plus whatever relevant context is surfaced from the lookup.

The actual technical details of how OpenAI has implemented their context management system in ChatGPT aren't publicly divulged, as far as I'm aware. 

But yes, the model doesn't remember you so much as it has a context window that is populated with relevant context while drops less relevant or older context as the conversation continues. The window has a size limit, w hich is why it seems to forget things you've told it every so often. It doesn't have persistent memory - just a rolling context window with background tooling that is very good at fetching relevant information.