#machinelearning

If you've used ChatGPT or Claude lately, you might have noticed something different: they remember more. Not just the last few messages, but entire conversations stretching back thousands of words. This isn't magic—it's the result of context windows getting dramatically larger, and it's changing how we interact with AI in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

Think of a context window like a desk. A few years ago, AI assistants had tiny desks—they could only see the last few pages of your conversation before earlier stuff fell off the edge. Ask a question on page one, reference it on page ten, and the AI would have no idea what you were talking about.

Now? These desks are more like warehouse floors. Modern models can hold entire codebases, lengthy documents, or hours of conversation in active memory. Claude's latest models can process over 200,000 tokens—roughly 150,000 words, or about two full novels.

2024 was supposed to be the year AI assistants became genuinely useful in everyday life. Instead, we got something more interesting: the year AI became deeply weird.

I'm not talking about the chatbots themselves—those have gotten impressively capable. I'm talking about how we're using them. A colleague recently told me he argues with ChatGPT about his therapy sessions. Not using it to reflect, mind you. Actually arguing with it about whether his therapist's advice was sound. Another friend asks Claude to roleplay as her deceased grandmother to help her process grief. A developer I know has his AI assistant write his standup updates in increasingly absurd voices—last week it was a film noir detective.

This isn't what anyone predicted. The discourse was all about job displacement and whether AI would replace writers or programmers. We spent months debating whether these tools were "truly intelligent." Meanwhile, people just started... using them. And using them in ways that have nothing to do with productivity.