I've always been of the hippocampus that it's short not long term memory in units of one day. Evidence that's the only CNS location that generates new cells on the regular (besides the nose). Timestamp cells produced within. Burns / fine tunes neocortex during sleep. and such.

Also noting that such thing as "an electric artificial hippocampus" has existed for some time - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3395724/