MIT

Future You: Using AI to Connect with Your Future Self

Wonder what you’ll be like down the line? There’s a new website created by MIT researchers, titled Future You, with which you can converse with an AI you at 60.

Future You seeks to develop a closer relationship between teens and their future selves because a strong relationship between teens and their future selves has been shown to yield better long-term choices, including savings and a focus on schooling.

As part of a massive language model like ChatGPT, Future You creates a real sense of you in the future based on what you’re heading toward and what you’ve lived through so far. By collecting data about you and simulating mock future memories, the AI can answer questions like “How did I overcome a challenge?” or “What could my future job be?”

Whereas other methods such as letter writing to oneself or use of virtual reality, Future You presents a more interactive experience so that you can sit down with your future self and investigate various possibilities of life.

Talking with Future You has an opportunity like having a conversation with an older and wiser you, with “When I was your age” providing a personal heart-to-heart dialogue. People using Future You reported feeling less anxious about what was ahead and closer to their own future self after just 30 minutes, a research study discovered.

Further, the site generates a virtual snapshot of you based on aging, allowing you to envision how you will look in the future. By having a dialogue with and visualizing your own future self, you can gain key insights into how your choices will affect you into the future. Future You has been created with an eye of allowing one to reflect and make smarter choices and provides a form of viewing one’s future without feelings of despair. The AI informs users that what they observe of their future is merely one of many possibilities, yet they can make a difference within their future with what they do today.

The MIT researchers have pledged themselves to further enhancing the system and considering how it can help individuals think about decisions regarding their careers and planetary ills such as climate change. Future You presents a new way of considering the future with users able to view themselves and their lives afresh.

This chatbot endeavors to urge humans to make decisions and take responsibility for their fate.

By:
Vraj Parikh