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"
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