The Memory Trap: Language Agents Overgeneralize from Benign Interactions

Abstract

Language agents increasingly use persistent memory to record user preferences and procedures across sessions. We show that memory from benign interactions can cause unsafe or unreliable behavior on later tasks. We call this failure the memory trap. To study this issue, we compare behavior in sessions with and without memory across six frontier models (including Claude Sonnet, Opus, and Fable models and GPT-5.6). We evaluate these models in a range of settings. First, in autonomy experiments, we find that requests to skip confirmation during low-stakes coding chores lead agents to skip confirmation and verification on simulated high-stakes tasks in both coding and everyday life. We next study memories formed when users seek emotional support, or describe harm from uncritical feedback, and find these memories bias later judgments of mathematical work, arguments, and poems toward sycophancy or over-critique (respectively). Memory notes written during legitimate stale-test repairs lead agents to weaken correct tests that catch broken safeguards; these memories also increase cheating on ImpossibleBench, with larger increases for stronger Sonnet and Opus models. We show that memory traps can arise both from overgeneralizations in memory writing, and when acting on memory. These findings demonstrate that even benign interactions can lead to serious risks from memory systems, and thus motivate the need for new research into ensuring that agents preserve the scope of their memories.