I've done a bunch of user interviews of ChatGPT, Pi, Gemini, etc. users and find there are two common usage patterns:
1. "Transactional" where every chat is a separate question, sort of like a Google search... People don't expect memory or any continuity between chats.
2. "Relationship-driven" where people chat with the LLM as if it's a friend or colleague. In this case, memory is critical.
I'm quite excited to see how OpenAI (and others) blend usage features between #1 and #2, as in many ways, these can require different user flows.
So HN -- how do you use these bots? And how does memory resonate, as a result?
Starting clean also has the benefit of knowing the prompt/history is in a clean/"known-good" state, and that there's nothing in the memory that's going to cause the LLM to get weird on me.
This matters a lot for prompt injection/hijacking. Not that I'm clamoring to give OpenAI access to my personal files or APIs in the first place, but I'm definitely not interested in giving a version of GPT with more persistent memory access to those files or APIs. A clean slate is a mitigating feature that helps with a real security risk. It's not enough of a mitigating feature, but it helps a bit.