Synthetic Memories: Generating the past

These days, we’ve got photographic evidence of our memories just about everywhere we turn. But what about the memories that can’t be called up at the touch of a button or the turn of a page? That’s the case for entire older generations, and one global research project is using artificial intelligence to create images of the memories of early-stage dementia patients. It’s a futuristic technology that recalls the past. (Presented by Deloitte).

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Featuring

Heather Landy is an executive editor of Quartz and co-host of the Quartz Obsession podcast. She is obsessed with bank crises, workplace psychology, and Bono.

Pau Garcia is a founding partner of Domestic Data Streamers in Barcelona. He also teaches at the Barcelona School of Economics and School of Design and Engineering.

Show notes

The Synthetic Memories project, Domestic Data Streamers

Two images generated from the project, using DALL-E:

Credits

This episode of the Quartz Obsession was produced by Chad Chenail, with additional support from executive editor Susan Howson and head of video Garth Bardsley. Our theme music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Suguira. This episode was recorded at G/O Media headquarters in New York and in Barcelona.