Shall the robots remember? Conceptualising the role of non-human agents in digital memory communication

Abstract

The rise of digital technology has led to fundamental changes in how individual and collective perspectives on the past are transmitted and engaged. An immediate implication of these changes relates to the shift away from human communication as a single form of communication about memory towards multiple models which involve non-human (or robotic) agents. These non-human agents are primarily constituted by artificial intelligence (AI)-driven systems, such as search engines and conversational agents, which retrieve information about the past for human users and are increasingly used to generate memory-related content. To account for the growing complexity of memory-related digital communication, the article introduces three agency-based models of such communication: (1) human-to-human; (2) human-to-robot; and (3) robot-to-robot. It discusses examples of communication practices enabled by these models and scrutinises their implications for individual and collective memory transmission. The article concludes by outlining several directions for memory communication research increasingly shaped by non-human agents.