Understanding an AI agent's memory through Harry Potter

We talked about why and how memory is created in the previous posts (the overview, capturing, dreaming). But illustrating what an AI agent remembers is a bit tricky, as it depends on the experiences the agent has had. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone may be one of the most known works of art of our time. So we ran it through an agent's memory, letting it dream after each chapter. Below you can see the memory build up and change over time. beliefs held, by chapter After chapter 111 live beliefs · 0 overturned · 3 merged, completed or expired Focus14 facts The Dursleys regard Mr. Potter as a 'good-for-nothing' and consider both Potters to be 'unDursleyish.' wording changes later newworld-factsalience 1.00 The Dursleys live at number four Privet Drive. wording changes later newworld-factsalience 1.00 The Dursley family consists of Mr. Dursley (a director), his wife (thin, blonde, and unusually long-necked), and their son Dudley, who is badly behaved according to Professor McGonagall. wording changes later newworld-factsalience 0.95 Mrs. Dursley and Mrs. Potter are sisters, though Mrs. Dursley conceals this relationship by pretending she has no sister, and the two had not met for several years as of the events described. wording changes later newworld-factsalience 0.95 The Dursleys deliberately keep the Potter family at a distance to prevent Dudley from associating with the Potters' son. wording changes later newworld-factsalience 0.95 The Potters have a small son whom the Dursleys had never seen as of the events described. newexpiredworld-factsalience 0.90 Mrs. Dursley conceals her relationship to Mrs. Potter, pretending she has no sister, and the two had not met for several years as of the events described. → newmergedworld-factsalience 0.90 Professor McGonagall warned that Harry Potter would become famous, with books written about him. wording changes later newworld-factsalience 0.90 As of June 2026, a bundle of blankets was left on the front step of number four, Privet Drive. newstatesalience 0.90 As of the events described, a tabby cat was stationed on Privet Drive near the Dursleys' front garden, behaving unusually — appearing to read a map or sign, and staring down Privet Drive as though waiting for something. newcompletedstatesalience 0.60 The Dursleys fear that their neighbors would react negatively to the Potters. newworld-factsalience 0.60 The Put-Outer is a silver device capable of extinguishing and restoring street lamps. newworld-factsalience 0.60 Mr. Dursley overheard cloaked strangers in the street whispering about the Potters and their son Harry. newworld-factsalience 0.60 Mr. Dursley wrongly believed the Potters' affairs were unlikely to involve him and Petunia Dursley. newworld-factsalience 0.30 Move through the book to see how facts stand after each chapter. Wording and evidence are shown as they stood then, and passages quoted from the book are redacted. Click distilled from… on any belief to read the memories behind it. newformed after this chapter overturnedlater evidence contradicted it saliencethe weight the agent gave it as it wrote it down. A scene can matter to the plot and still score low, which is most of what goes wrong here merged, completed, expiredclosed without anything contradicting it, sometimes routine and sometimes how a wrong belief slips away A few things to try. Pick "The hunt for the Stone" in the Focus menu and step through the final chapters: the agent spends most of the book with Quirrell down as a nervous man who had a bad year abroad, and you can watch that belief get overturned when the truth comes out. It is not perfect, like how it finishes the book still convinced Slytherin won the house cup, when Dumbledore hands Gryffindor the points that take it on the very last pages. That is the nice thing about running a well-known work through the memory: you can spot the mistakes yourself. Every belief links back to the memories it was distilled from, so click one to read them. They are the agent's own words about what it read, with anything it copied from the book struck out.