“I Am Not Accustomed to Repeating Myself!”

The Unsettling Accuracy of AI Memory Reconstruction

EVEN THOUGH WE are only at the dawn of the AI era, I’m already fascinated, amazed, and at times unnerved by what these powerful systems can do in their infancy. The leaps ordinary consumers have witnessed in just the past year alone are extraordinary.

Only this past summer did I begin experimenting with mass-market AI music tools such as Suno and video generators like Sora. Hardly six months have passed, and already it’s obvious that the mind-blowing AI capabilities we currently take for granted will feel primitive this time next year. What will three years bring? Five? At the current pace, those markers feel like distant ages, yet they will arrive before we have time to catch our breath.

A recent experiment brought that point home to me in a vivid way.

I worked at Sears for four years in the late 1970s, mostly in hardware and housewares. There’s an incident from around 1979 that I’ve retold as a mildly humorous anecdote more than a few times since it happened, mainly because its ironic absurdity genuinely amuses me, even if it doesn’t always get the same reaction from others.

A dignified woman, perhaps seventy, approached me with a question about a set of dishes on the display shelf. I’ve always had a penchant for improvisational humor, especially the absurd kind, and preferably in life’s most ordinary situations. My wife has said for decades, with a raised eyebrow, “You crack yourself up,” and she’s right.

So when the woman asked her question, I gave an overly casual reply: “What?” She stiffened and answered sharply, “Young man, I am not accustomed to repeating myself.”

There are moments in life when a person stands at a crossroads. One of mine arrived right then. With that mischievous spark that too often got me into trouble in those days, I said again—dead pan, and with the faintest glint of I-crack-myself-up humor in my eye—“I’m sorry, what?”

Her eyes widened in disbelief and she repeated, louder this time, delightfully oblivious to the irony, “I am not accustomed to repeating myself!”

That’s all I remember. I couldn’t tell you whether she bought the dishes or left in frustration, shaking her head at the impertinent sales clerk. But the exchange struck me as so odd, so perfectly quirky, that it lodged in my memory and never left.

Which brings me back to Sora.

On a whim, I asked it to recreate that moment. I supplied details, down to the fluorescent lighting and institutional beige you’d expect from a 1979 Sears. I guessed at her exact question and told the AI model she was asking about a warranty, which seems entirely plausible after so many decades.

What it returned amused by also stunned me. The video (watch at the bottom of this post) eerily captured the look, the feel, the atmosphere, even the mood of that 1979 Sears department-store era with unnerving precision. It was accurate enough to unsettle me a bit, and funny enough to chuckle out loud even as I shook my head in disbelief at AI’s powers.

Point being: If a machine, a software program, can reconstruct a fleeting memory from nearly half a century ago with this uncanny level of precision, what will these systems be able to produce in a few short years? What will they do with our stories, our imaginations, our histories, our minds?

And will these AI creations continue to make us smile, or will they force us to confront something far less comforting?

Video:

Postscript:

Even in the 70s, I never wore anything as hideous as that shirt and tie combo.

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