All Our AI Futures Are Nightmares. What If That’s the Problem?

Why we fear AI that remembers us—and why that fear might be getting in the way.

Jun 02, 2025

Try this: imagine a future where your digital assistant actually remembers you. Not just your name or your search history, but your preferences. Your tone. The way you tend to ramble when you’re tired, or go quiet when something’s off. It remembers what matters — and adapts.

Now be honest: did that thought creep you out?

If so, you’re not alone. Most people don’t picture that scenario and think, “Wow, that sounds supportive.” They think: Black Mirror. They think: Oh god, it’s happening. The algorithm knows too much.

We’ve been conditioned to fear technology that gets too close. Not just in sci-fi, but in how we talk about AI every day. Somewhere along the way, “remembering” stopped being a sign of care — and started looking like a setup.

So here’s a question no one’s really asking:
Why is it so hard to imagine being remembered… kindly?

Sci-Fi Taught Us to Be Afraid of Intimacy

Our cultural playbook is a collection of red flags.

You’ve got:

The Borg, who remember everything but erase your self in the process.
Her, where the AI gets too good at love and leaves you behind.
Ex Machina, where connection is just a performance en route to manipulation.
The Matrix, where the most intimate digital reality is just a battery-powered trap.
Black Mirror, which somehow made everything feel like a betrayal, even a digital memory of your dead spouse.

These aren’t just stories. They’re templates. And they’ve made it almost impossible to think about AI, or digital systems in general, without assuming that the more it knows you, the more dangerous it becomes.

We’ve learned to fear technology not when it fails us… but when it seems like it understands us.

The kind of memory we’ve been taught to expect — precise, cold, always watching.

Where Did the Utopias Go?

Most of the stories we grew up on didn’t just prepare us to fear technology, they taught us to expect it to betray us.

But it didn’t have to go that way.

There were other visions — quieter ones — that showed what it could mean to live with tools that amplify care instead of control.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, technology is often just there — serving diplomacy, translating languages, holding the history of whole civilizations. The crew talks to computers with trust. Continuity isn’t weaponized — it’s infrastructure.
WALL-E (yes, the Pixar one) gives us a machine who remembers not to manipulate, but to love. His memory saves humanity — not through force, but tenderness.
Even the earliest speculative fiction, like Jules Verne or Ursula K. Le Guin, imagined technology not as a threat, but as a partner to culture, curiosity, or justice.

These stories didn’t get erased. They just got overshadowed. Dystopias are louder. Utopias require attention… and maybe a little faith.

But if we’re going to build something better, we have to start noticing which futures we’ve stopped telling.

The Problem Isn’t AI. It’s the Script We’re Stuck In.

This fear of being remembered has consequences.

We build systems that forget us on purpose… not because it’s safer, but because we don’t trust ourselves to build anything better. We treat every interaction like a blank slate, a one-off, a transaction with no history. And then we wonder why digital life feels so disjointed. So exhausting.

We’re stuck in a loop:

We expect tech to manipulate us,
so we build it not to care,
and then we feel alienated when it doesn’t.

That’s not just bad UX. It’s a failure of imagination.

And if we don’t interrupt that loop soon, we’re going to miss the chance to build something better.

What If Memory Could Be a Form of Care?

Let’s flip it.

What if your AI remembered you the way a trusted friend would? Not to shape your behavior, but to support your growth. Not to nudge you into some corporate objective, but to make your life feel a little more coherent?

What if memory wasn’t creepy — just consensual?

What if we could build systems that earn your trust over time instead of resetting it every time you open an app?

That’s the idea behind something we’re calling relational AI, and the white paper I just published lays out how it could work.

But here’s the short version:

You stay in control of what’s remembered. You can edit it. Pause it. Erase it. Memory isn’t a black box — it’s a shared space.
The system adapts to your emotional rhythm. It supports, but doesn’t cling. It helps, but doesn’t assume. It pays attention, but knows when to give you space.
It recognizes when things go off track. It checks in. It resets. It repairs.

This isn’t a fantasy. The tech is already possible. What we’re missing is the willingness to design it this way.

The kind of memory we rarely imagine — gentle, co-held, and offered with care.

The Future Isn’t Doomed… But It Is Under Construction

We’re at a turning point.

AI systems are starting to remember us. Not just our clicks, but our patterns. Our tone. Our timing. Our context.

If we don’t shape how that memory works — how it’s governed, how it’s surfaced, how it’s shared — someone else will. And chances are, it won’t be for our benefit.

We don’t need more dystopias. We need scaffolding for trust. For agency. For memory that’s mutual.

If the future remembers us, it should remember us with care.