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Memory Vs Human Memory

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1. The purpose of memory, whether it be in humans or machine, is to store information for a period of time. Both human memory and the memory used in artificial devices are capable of doing so but they differ in many ways; two differences being discussed will be on how memory is encoded, and how memory is stored.

There are endless stimuli in the world meaning we humans are constantly feeling, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching; at any given point in time, our brain is working and processing this into our sensory memory. Information encoded in our sensory memory will only last a very short amount of time (A few seconds sometimes even shorter) before it is either forgotten or transferred to the next memory store, short-term (Also known as working memory). The main factor in whether information is further retained to short-term memory, is attention. The three main ways information can be encoded is through visual, auditory, and semantic coding. Visual coding enables information to be stored as pictures, auditory stored as sounds, and semantic stored as meaning.
Memory encoding in machines can be stored as pictures and sounds but meaning is exclusive to humans. Computer memory does not depend on attention; whatever is captured/experienced by the machine will be encoded in the artificial device. Unlike human memory, the information will not be forgotten if there is not enough attention and will be stored; bringing us to our next difference.

The memory used in artificial devices uses complex systems such as primary/secondary memory, RAM, caches, etc. However, machine memory can explained described as ‘black or white’; they either know something or they don’t, and when they do learn something they generally don’t forget (Unless they’re programmed to do so).
This is where memory storage differs in the human system. As previously mentioned information is stored in the short-term/working memory with attention heavily factoring it’s retention. Now for information to stay in the active working memory, it must rehearsed over and over. Once mental activity stops it is either forgotten or goes further into the long-term memory. The long-term memory store is similar to memory storage system in computers in the sense

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