Augmenting Cognition With a Digital Episodic Memory

Current technology makes it increasingly feasible for personal assistance systems to create an augmented episodic memory that supplements their users’ own episodic memory. After considering the question of what such an augmented episodic memory might be useful for, we present a proof-of-concept system SPECTER that realizes this idea. We consider in turn the challenges of (a) automatically capturing and appropriately representing information about the user’s actions and experiences; (b) enabling the user to review and revise the information captured; (c) offering functions based on the episodic memory that can help the user deal more effectively with everyday situations; and (d) determining in what situations to make these functions available proactively.