Insight certainty 3/5 debate potential 2/5

Continuous knowledge consolidation remains unsolved in LLM research and development

Andrej Karpathy · Andrej Karpathy: Software Is Changing (Again) · Y Combinator · Jun 19, 2025 · at 17:02

Andrej Karpathy explains to AI founders that LLM context windows only act as temporary working memory rather than real-time continuous learning.

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“LLMs don't natively do this, and this is not something that has really been solved in the R&D of LLMs, I think. And so context windows are really kind of like working memory, and you have to sort of program the working memory quite directly because they don't just kind of like get smarter by, ah, by default, and I think a lot of people get tripped up by the analogies, ah, in this way.”

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