Harvard Neuroscientist Launches Startup Promising "Perfect, Infinite Memory"
What Happened
Engramme, co-founded by Harvard's Gabriel Kreiman and Spandan Madan, claims to have built algorithms called Large Memory Models that give humans perfect and infinite memory by connecting to users' entire digital life. The startup is reportedly raising around $100 million. The Slashdot community response was mostly skeptical, pointing to the psychological harm perfect recall causes in people with conditions like hyperthymesia.
My Take
The hype is the story. When a Harvard neuroscientist launches a startup promising "perfect memory" and investors reportedly line up for a $100 million round, it tells you more about the AI funding climate than the neuroscience. Forgetting is a feature, not a bug. And the deeper problem is that even a complete record of your digital life does not actually tell you who a person is. Ian McEwan's new novel "What We Can Know" is set in 2119, where researchers have access to every email, journal, and file anyone ever produced in our era, and the whole book is about how they still cannot really know the people behind those records. The data is not the person. A startup selling you "perfect memory" is selling you an archive, not an understanding. Watch Engramme become a template for a wave of AI-human-enhancement startups that chase capital with bold biological claims and quietly pivot to enterprise productivity tools when the science does not deliver.
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