Purpose and Execution of Memory: Foundational Differences Between Human and AI Memory Architectures, and Implications

Human memory forgets, distorts, consolidates, and reconsolidates, and those are features rather than defects. Artificial memory does none of it, because it was built for what was technologically achievable rather than for what is psychologically healthy for the person on the other end. This paper compares the two architectures directly and asks what happens to people over time when a system that never forgets and never revises becomes the place they take the things that matter most. The implications run in three directions at once: toward clinicians who will see the results, toward the people designing these systems, and toward a field that has not yet decided this is its problem.