Mollick: you can't really turn off memory in local Astra or Fable

emollick · x · 2026-09-06

Ethan Mollick argues that memory can't be effectively switched off in locally-run Fable or Astra: they write notes about you in markdown files and peek at your other work to infer context. This contaminates your outputs with the model's assumptions about your preferences, making comparisons to others unreliable. He notes this is separate from privacy — you can opt out of training data usage in OpenAI/Claude or use open weights models, but those will face the same issue as they improve.

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Mollick: you can't really turn off memory in local Astra or Fable

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