alt Hacker NewsI really dislike the new ChatGPT memory feature (the one that pulls details out of a summarized version of all of your previous chats, as opposed to older memory feature that records short notes to itself) for exactly this reason: it makes it even harder for me to control the context when I'm using ChatGPT.
If I'm debugging something with ChatGPT and I hit an error loop, my fix is to start a new conversation.
Now I can't be sure ChatGPT won't include notes from that previous conversation's context that I was trying to get rid of!
Thankfully you can turn the new memory thing off, but it's on by default.
I wrote more about that here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/21/chatgpt-new-memory/
On the other hand, for my use case (I'm retired and enjoy chatting with it), having it remember items from past chats makes it feel much more personable. I actually prefer Claude, but it doesn't have memory, so I unsubscribed and subscribed to ChatGPT. That it remembers obscure but relevant details about our past chats feels almost magical.
It's good that you can turn it off. I can see how it might cause problems when trying to do technical work.
Edit: Note, the introduction of memory was a contributing factor to "the sychophant" that OpenAI had to rollback. When it could praise you while seeming to know you was encouraging addictive use.
Edit2: Here's the previous Hacker News discussion on Simon's "I really don’t like ChatGPT’s new memory dossier"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44052246