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Ok, you asked for a crackpot theory, so here goes my crackpot theory, I make no claim that any of the following is correct, but I would be happy for any corrections if anyone know more than me! If I take a broad look at AI systems as they are today and I compare them to everything in the natural world that is capable of the kind of reasoning we consider'intelligence', then the common difference I find is in how and why they retain information, not in how they process it. Let me elaborate, AI systems perform wonderfully in situations where we can define boundaries in the information that the system must process (i.e. What does all humans / intelligent species do that AI systems do not, we retain information, mostly in a way that is outside our conscious control, that fact that long term memory is a common trait, largely automatic and innate makes me put in its importance to intelligence on the same level as breathing is to staying alive. And we can make some sense of it, dealing with and and reasoning about a novel situation often requires information that you might not have considered very important at the time.