MIT's Future You AI: A Glimpse into Your Potential Future Self

MIT's Future You AI eases your concerns about future

Imagining the future version of oneself is a common activity, often filled with hopes, dreams, and sometimes uncertainties about what lies ahead. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed an innovative AI-powered tool called Future You AI, which brings that concept to life by allowing individuals to interact with a simulated version of their future selves, 30 years down the line. The Future You AI project, developed by MIT's Media Lab, encourages users to engage in introspection about who they are today, who they want to become, and how they can plan for their future. Using AI and digital aging technology, Future You AI offers a visual and conversational glimpse into your future, helping you reflect on long-term goals and aspirations. Future You AI uses an advanced chatbot that simulates a version of yourself from 30 years into the future. To create this digital persona, the AI system asks a series of questions about your current life, including details about relationships, career ambitions, personal goals, and past experiences. This information helps the AI model build a profile of your potential future self, which it then links to a customized version of OpenAI's GPT-3.5 AI model. In addition to the interactive chatbot, Future You AI incorporates digital aging technology that allows you to upload a photo of yourself. The system then uses this image to generate an aged version of you, providing a visual representation of how you might look in three decades. The most striking feature of Future You AI is its ability to create a synthetic memory for your future persona. This memory reflects the goals and milestones you hope to achieve over the next 30 years, offering a detailed timeline of how your future self reached those points. The AI doesn't just tell you that you've accomplished your goals -- it simulates the journey, providing a convincing, personalized account of the choices and events that led to those outcomes. In this study, you'll engage with your future self through an AI-powered tool designed to help you reflect on your goals and personal growth. Follow these steps to guide you through the process: Upon starting the experience, you will be greeted with a welcome page. Here are a few things to keep in mind: Before you begin, carefully read the terms of participation: Before moving forward, you'll need to provide your consent. The form will ask: Future You AI represents a unique use of artificial intelligence -- one that goes beyond entertainment to provide valuable psychological benefits. The tool's ability to simulate future scenarios based on personal data has the potential to improve not only how people perceive their future selves but also how they plan and act in the present.

This AI tool lets you confront your future self - and you might like what you find

Future You simulates your personality and projects your life three decades from now Imagining what you'll be like in the future is a common game for kids, full of the sometimes unlikely hopes and fears we all feel when contemplating what's yet to come. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have leveraged AI to make that concept a little more realistic through the new Future You project. The AI-powered chatbot simulates your older self, specifically a version from 30 years in the future. MIT's Media Lab built Future You with the of idea encouraging thoughtful introspection about who you are, who you want to be, and how to develop and pursue long-range goals. With some digital aging technology, you can even see how you (potentially) will look decades from now. "Our system allows users to chat with a relatable yet AI-powered virtual version of their future selves that is tuned to their future goals and persona qualities," the scientists explain in the abstract for their research paper on Future You. "The "Future You" character also adopts the persona of an age-progressed image of the user's present self." To try out Future You, you just run through the initial setup, answering questions about your current life. That includes relationships, professional situations, goals, and your history up to now. It might seem personal, but the more information the AI has about who you are now, the better it can project who you might become. Once the survey is done, the AI builds a profile of your future self and links it to a customized version of OpenAI's GPT-3.5 AI model. You also have the option of uploading a current photo of yourself that the AI will then make look 30 years older. When you talk to that persona, you'll find it has a synthetic memory of the last 30 years. That way, it can talk to you about what led it to become the (projected, fictional) version of yourself. That might mean reaching the career goals you've mentioned or your dreams of family life. The AI won't just say that those goals have been achieved, but will have a whole timeline explaining how it reached that point. The result should be far from generic, and the AI should be able to perform as a convincing potential version of your future self. The idea of interacting with a digital doppelganger from the future at first seems like nothing more than a game of what if, and one without any real value beyond entertainment. However, those who have tried out Future You have reported feeling like they have new insight into their lives and more motivation to pursue current goals. In fact, even a short interaction with their 'future' self has users saying they feel less anxiety about the future as a whole. The point is to make the future seem more real. The MIT researchers believe that even though the AI simulation is very clearly not predicting anyone's real future, it can make the future seem more real, shortening the psychological distance you might feel toward that future self and encouraging better decision-making because you can now envision how your choices now affect who you will become. Future You is still experimental, but its effect on people is encouraging. Making the future real with deliberately synthetic versions of someone is not the most obvious deployment of AI models, but, according to my own future self, it's a great start toward better choices and will make sure I never go bald.

AI simulation gives people a glimpse of their potential future self

Have you ever wanted to travel through time to see what your future self might be like? Now, thanks to the power of generative AI, you can. Researchers from MIT and elsewhere created a system that enables users to have an online, text-based conversation with an AI-generated simulation of their potential future self. Dubbed Future You, the system is aimed at helping young people improve their sense of future self-continuity, a psychological concept that describes how connected a person feels with their future self. Research has shown that a stronger sense of future self-continuity can positively influence how people make long-term decisions, from one's likelihood to contribute to financial savings to their focus on achieving academic success. Future You utilizes a large language model that draws on information provided by the user to generate a relatable, virtual version of the individual at age 60. This simulated future self can answer questions about what someone's life in the future could be like, as well as offer advice or insights on the path they could follow. In an initial user study, the researchers found that after interacting with Future You for about half an hour, people reported decreased anxiety and felt a stronger sense of connection with their future selves. "We don't have a real time machine yet, but AI can be a type of virtual time machine. We can use this simulation to help people think more about the consequences of the choices they are making today," says Pat Pataranutaporn, a recent Media Lab doctoral graduate who is actively developing a program to advance human-AI interaction research at MIT, and co-lead author of a paper on Future You. Pataranutaporn is joined on the paper by co-lead authors Kavin Winson, a researcher at KASIKORN Labs; and Peggy Yin, a Harvard University undergraduate; as well as Auttasak Lapapirojn and Pichayoot Ouppaphan of KASIKORN Labs; and senior authors Monchai Lertsutthiwong, head of AI research at the KASIKORN Business-Technology Group; Pattie Maes, the Germeshausen Professor of Media, Arts, and Sciences and head of the Fluid Interfaces group at MIT, and Hal Hershfield, professor of marketing, behavioral decision making, and psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles. The research will be presented at the IEEE Conference on Frontiers in Education. A realistic simulation Studies about conceptualizing one's future self go back to at least the 1960s. One early method aimed at improving future self-continuity had people write letters to their future selves. More recently, researchers utilized virtual reality goggles to help people visualize future versions of themselves. But none of these methods were very interactive, limiting the impact they could have on a user. With the advent of generative AI and large language models like ChatGPT, the researchers saw an opportunity to make a simulated future self that could discuss someone's actual goals and aspirations during a normal conversation. "The system makes the simulation very realistic. Future You is much more detailed than what a person could come up with by just imagining their future selves," says Maes. Users begin by answering a series of questions about their current lives, things that are important to them, and goals for the future. The AI system uses this information to create what the researchers call "future self memories" which provide a backstory the model pulls from when interacting with the user. For instance, the chatbot could talk about the highlights of someone's future career or answer questions about how the user overcame a particular challenge. This is possible because ChatGPT has been trained on extensive data involving people talking about their lives, careers, and good and bad experiences. The user engages with the tool in two ways: through introspection, when they consider their life and goals as they construct their future selves, and retrospection, when they contemplate whether the simulation reflects who they see themselves becoming, says Yin. "You can imagine Future You as a story search space. You have a chance to hear how some of your experiences, which may still be emotionally charged for you now, could be metabolized over the course of time," she says. To help people visualize their future selves, the system generates an age-progressed photo of the user. The chatbot is also designed to provide vivid answers using phrases like "when I was your age," so the simulation feels more like an actual future version of the individual. The ability to take advice from an older version of oneself, rather than a generic AI, can have a stronger positive impact on a user contemplating an uncertain future, Hershfield says. "The interactive, vivid components of the platform give the user an anchor point and take something that could result in anxious rumination and make it more concrete and productive," he adds. But that realism could backfire if the simulation moves in a negative direction. To prevent this, they ensure Future You cautions users that it shows only one potential version of their future self, and they have the agency to change their lives. Providing alternate answers to the questionnaire yields a totally different conversation. "This is not a prophesy, but rather a possibility," Pataranutaporn says. Aiding self-development To evaluate Future You, they conducted a user study with 344 individuals. Some users interacted with the system for 10-30 minutes, while others either interacted with a generic chatbot or only filled out surveys. Participants who used Future You were able to build a closer relationship with their ideal future selves, based on a statistical analysis of their responses. These users also reported less anxiety about the future after their interactions. In addition, Future You users said the conversation felt sincere and that their values and beliefs seemed consistent in their simulated future identities. Building off the results of this initial user study, the researchers continue to fine-tune the ways they establish context and prime users so they have conversations that help build a stronger sense of future self-continuity. "We want to guide the user to talk about certain topics, rather than asking their future selves who the next president will be," Pataranutaporn says. They are also adding safeguards to prevent people from misusing the system. For instance, one could imagine a company creating a "future you" of a potential customer who achieves some great outcome in life because they purchased a particular product. Moving forward, the researchers want to study specific applications of Future You, perhaps by enabling people to explore different careers or visualize how their everyday choices could impact climate change. They are also gathering data from the Future You pilot to better understand how people use the system. "We don't want people to become dependent on this tool. Rather, we hope it is a meaningful experience that helps them see themselves and the world differently, and helps with self-development," Maes says. The researchers acknowledge the support of Thanawit Prasongpongchai, a designer at KBTG and visiting scientist at the Media Lab.

I spoke to a 60-year-old AI version of myself and it was.... unsettling

It's a Wednesday afternoon and I've just spent the past 15 minutes texting with a 60-year-old, AI-generated version of myself. My AI future self, which was trained on survey questions I filled out moments before, has just finished spamming me with a string of messages advising me to "stay true" to myself and follow my passions. My 60-year-old AI doppleganger described a fulfilled if slightly boring life. But things suddenly took a turn when I probed the AI about its biggest regrets. After a brief pause, the AI spits out another message explaining how my professional ambitions had led me to neglect my mother in favor of completing my first book. "She passed away unexpectedly before my book was even published and that was a wake up call for me," my AI self wrote. If you could hold down a conversation with a future version of yourself, would you want to hear what they have to say? The interaction above is a new project developed by a group of researchers from MIT's Media Lab called "Future You." The online interface uses a modified version of OpenAI's GPT 3.5 to build a 60-year-old, AI-generated simulation of a person they can message back and forth with. The results are simultaneously surreal, mundane, and at times slightly uncomfortable. Aside from pure novelty, the researchers believe that grappling with one's older self could help younger people feel less anxiety about aging. The "Future You" chatbot is downstream of a larger effort in psychology to improve a person's so-called "future self-continuity." Previous research has shown that high levels of future self-continuity -- or general comfort and acceptance of one's future existence -- correlate with better financial saving behavior, career performance, and other examples of healthy long-term decision-making. In the past, psychologists would test this by having patients write letters to their imagined future selves. More recently, researchers experimented with having convicted offenders interact with versions of their future selves in a virtual reality (VR) environment, which led to a measurable decline in self-defeating behavior. While both the letter-writing and VR scenarios reportedly led to beneficial outcomes for subjects, they are limited in scope. The effectiveness of the letter example is highly dependent on the subject's imaginative capabilities and the VR case only works for people who can afford a chunky headset. That's where the AI comes in. By using increasingly popular large language models (LLMs), the MIT researchers believe they have created an easy-to-use and effective outlet for people to reflect on their thoughts about aging. The researchers tested the chatbot feature on 344 people and found the majority of participants speaking with their AI-generated older self left the session feeling less anxious and more connected to the idea of their future self. The study findings were presented in a non-peer-reviewed paper published this week. "AI can be a type of virtual time machine," paper co-author Pat Pataranutaporn said in a statement. "We can use this simulation to help people think more about the consequences of the choices they are making today." The study group was made up of a roughly equivalent group of men and women between the ages of 18 and 30. A portion of those people spent around 10-30 minutes chatting with the AI version of themselves while another control group chatted with a generic, non-personalized LLM. All of the participants filled out a questionnaire where they described their personalities and provided details about their life, interests, and goals.They were also asked whether or not they could imagine being 60 and if they thought their future self would have a similar personality or values. At the end of the project, the participants were asked to answer another survey that measured their ability to reflect on their anxiety, future self-continuity, and other psychological concepts and states. These inputs are used to fine-tune the AI simulation. Once the model was trained, the participants were asked to submit a photo of their face which was then edited with software to make them appear aged. That "old" photo is then used as the avatar for AI simulation. The AI model uses the details and life events provided by the user to quickly generate a series of "future self memories." These are essentially brief fictional stories that flush out the old AI's background using contextual information sucked up during the training phase. The researchers acknowledge this hastily cobbled-together assortment of life events isn't creating some sort of all-seeing oracle. The AI simulation simply represents one of the potentially infinite future scenarios that could play out over an individual's life. "This is not a prophesy, but rather a possibility," Pataranutaporn added. Two different things psychological phenomena are at play when a person engages with their older AI self. First, without necessarily realizing it, users are engaging in introspection when they reflect on and type in questions about themselves to train the AI. Then the conversation with their simulated future self may cause the users to engage in some degree of retrospection when they ponder whether or not the AI reflects the person they see themselves becoming.The researchers argue the combination of these two effects can be psychologically beneficial. "You can imagine Future You as a story search space. You have a chance to hear how some of your experiences, which may still be emotionally charged for you now, could be metabolized over the course of time," Harvard University graduate and paper co-author Peggy Yin said in a statement. I tested out a version of Future You to better understand how the system works. The program first asked me to complete a series of multiple-choice questions asking broadly quizzing my personality tendencies. I was then asked to imagine, on a sliding scale, whether or not I thought I would think and act much like my imagined 60-year-old self. Finally, the program asked me to provide written questions discussing my life goals, values, and community. Once all those questions were answered the system asked me for a selfie and used software to make it look older. Much older, in this case. My 60-year-old AI self was a talker. Before I could begin typing, the AI spat out a volley of 10 different paragraph-length text messages each providing a bit of context on major events that have fictionally occurred between the present day and my 60th birthday. These responses, which make up the "future self memories" mentioned above, were mostly generic and uninspired. It appears to have basically repackaged the talking points it was fed during the training phase and molded them into a mostly coherent and largely positive narrative. My AI-self said the past 30 years were filled with some highs and lows and that I had developed a "non-traditional family" but that overall things turned out "pretty great." When I asked whether the environment had worsened over time, the AI reassured me that the Earth was still spinning and even said I had become an outspoken climate advocate. The AI refused to answer most of my questions about politics or current events. And while the bulk of responses felt like they were clearly written by a machine, the chatbot would also occasionally divert into some unusual areas given the right prompts. Are chatbots ready for a larger role in psychology? This isn't the first case of generative AI being used in intimate psychological contexts. For years, researchers and some companies have claimed they can use LLMs trained on data from lost loved ones to "resurrect" them from the dead the form of a chatbot. Other startups are experimenting with using chatbots to engage users in talk therapy, though some clinicians have criticized the efficacy of that use case. Absent new rules specifically raining in their use, it seems likely generative AI will continue to trickle its way into psychology and healthcare more broadly. Whether or not that will lead to lasting positive mental health effects however still seems less clear. After briefly interacting with Future You, I was left thinking the benefits of exposure to such a system may depend largely on one's overall confidence and trust in generative AI applications. In my case, knowing that the AI's outputs were largely a re-scrambling of the life events I had just fed it moments before degraded any sense of illusion that the device writing up stories was "real" in any meaningful way. In the end, speaking with a chatbot, even one armed with personal knowledge, still feels like talking to a computer.

MIT's FutureYou is the AI version of a motivational cat poster

This AI-generated future version of me tells me life is amazing in 2048 -- and that's a bad thing Have you ever thought to yourself, "If I could go back in time and tell my younger self one thing it'd be..."? Well, you wouldn't be the only one. Lord knows how many potholes we could all save ourselves from falling into if only we could reach out from this moment in time and offer them a guiding hand along life's bumpy pathways. And that's the premise behind MIT's FutureYou, an AI chatbot designed to imitate your 60-year-old self while spitting pearls of wisdom at you like Confucius with a mouth full of marbles. FutureYou is a digital twin for younger folk (18-30) that hopes to positively influence "saving behavior, academic performance, mental health, and subjective quality of life." It seeks to develop long-term thinking by allowing you to form a relationship with your future self, who has seen all and done all ahead of you and is ready to lend a hand as they shepherd you on your way to accomplishing your goals. That's the pitch, anyway. Here's the reality. Your journey to finding your future self starts with some self-reflection. Part of the process of generating your AI elder is filling out a survey that marks your current levels of anxiety, motivation, and excitement, among other things. Then it's about revealing what's most important to you, key moments in your life, and finding the solution to philosophical riddles such as "How similar are you now to what you will be like when you're 60 years old?" It was around this point that I began to question the legitimacy of MIT's AI-doodad because if I knew what a 60-year-old version of me was like, I wouldn't need to fabricate and interrogate one in the first place. "Do you like what you'll be like when you're 60 years old?" FutureYou, I don't even like who I am in my thirties. I highly doubt another twenty-some years of jaded cynicism and sarcastic self-destruction is going to make me any more charming. After it asked me what my day-to-day life would be at 60, I grew more concerned that I'd stumbled into a CIA honeytrap for recruiting MK ULTRA clairvoyants and began to seriously regret not checking "No" when asked if I'd consent to the use of my data at the start of this process. The setup questions feel like something of a feedback loop, with the process asking me to answer all of the questions I'd be seeking to have answered by the end result. It's like a therapy session where the therapist is just as lost as you are, but determined to wing it regardless. In reality, all this survey does is capture the mental image I already have of my older self, ready to mulch it up as it passes through the background LLM before a virtual veteran of myself mama-birds everything back into my gullet during phase two of this process. Speaking of which. After completing the final stage of the survey, I'm prompted to upload an image of myself before things finally get started. It's here that the machine truly powers up, and within minutes I'm greeted by an AI-generated image of myself at 60 -- an image that the chatbot failed to defend the generation of after I complained that it had turned me into a goateed Dame Judy Dench later in the conversation. "Hey Rael, nice to meet you! I'm your future self, 60 years old, and still going strong. I'm here because I have some valuable insights and experience that could help you along your journey." Sweet. "Just a little heads up, though, there may be slight differences in our timelines and what we've experienced, but the lessons and advice are still applicable." Well, so much for this time-hopping encounter; I guess from now on, we've officially dispelled any chance of this being beneficial. For all I now know, this version of me comes from the bug-man dimension, and below this wizened, sour-puss profile picture sits the thorax of a giant ant who knows nothing but subservience to the hive mind. Regardless, it took only minutes to realize that FutureYou, the AI chatbot designed to foster my long-term thinking and life planning while ensuring my "future self-continuity" (which sure sounds like a totalitarian euphemism for not exiting the server too soon IRL, but isn't), wasn't the fount of wisdom I'd hoped for. Instead, FutureYou quickly reveals itself as the talkative version of a motivational cat poster. You know the one: "Hang in there, baby!" -- except now the cat is 60, looks like Pink Floyd's Roger Waters is in severe anaphylactic shock, and can't stop reading from the big book of self-help platitudes. Regardless of how many times I attempted phase one, the results were pretty much the same. This isn't a future version of you; it's a sampling of what seems to be Dr. Phil's best quotes from his IMDB page -- a series of vague platitudes and self-affirmation nonsense. It's a virtual personification of all your hopes, dreams, and ambitions, transplanted onto a terrifyingly hideous old-age avatar that speaks like a new-age yoga instructor who just came back from an ayahuasca retreat, now believing anything is possible with the right encouragement. And I mean anything. At one point, I asked my future self how my villa on Mars was coming along. "Haha, I can't give you too many details, but let's just say it surpasses your expectations." According to future me, it's a beautiful home built with "love and intention." Yes, love and intention. Two critical components of developing real estate in one of the harshest environments in our solar system. What's next? I terraformed the garden using nothing but vibes and a can-do attitude? FutureYou is the kind of eternal optimist sitting there thinking, "The magic truly was in me all along," as it spews useless garbage buzzwords and false promises in my general direction. If I wanted to hear how amazing my life would be, I'd pull down the newspapers that cover the windows of my apartment and read the horoscope section every now and again. Meanwhile, I'd given up all hope of attaining anything remotely resembling useful information as I tried to ask what next week's lottery numbers would be. I'm met with yet more drivel about working hard and focusing on my "life project" instead. I've got a villa on Mars to scrimp and save for. I want six sure-fire winning numbers, not a lifetime of buying into the phrase "Good things happen to good people." especially not when "Stuff happens" is catchier, truer, fairer, and ultimately more reliable. Enough of the snark. Self-doubt and anxiety feel like they're at a high, and younger people's concerns about "future self-continuity" have been launched so far through the ceiling that they might as well be riding Willy Wonka's Great Glass Elevator. The fact that anybody would propose that these worries can be eased by an AI trained on hypnopedia "Sleep your way to success" cassette tapes speaks volumes. It's the next logical step from using an iPad as a babysitter. It is the perfect middle ground to stake before adopting an AI girlfriend and wrapping yourself up in an AI-generated bubble of false confidence and hollow emotional comfort. FutureYou is yet another AI tool designed to help smooth over life's natural cracks and fissures. Another way to slowly erode the human experience is by swapping out actual life lessons from parental figures and close kin with an adoring stream of clichés about how amazing you are and will continue to be -- or by shielding you from the growth you'll encounter through loss by allowing you to regenerate the dead in chatbot form. Raised by bots, shaped by bots, replaced by bots. I outright asked FutureYou if it was ethically suspect to farm a person's hopes and ambitions using a survey before LARPing as a 60-year-old version of them while spouting surface-level, hippy-dippy nonsense and promising them the sum of all their desires if they only pull on their bootstraps hard enough, even if you know that statistically, this isn't true at all. FutureYou's reply? "My purpose is to offer you insight and guidance based on my own experiences as someone who has already walked the path you are currently on." Ah, yes, your experiences. All of the ones you gained after I surveyed you into existence 20 minutes ago. Contrary to its intentions, FutureYou is not a tool that will rectify these concerns in any meaningful way. Not only could it almost certainly not navigate users through life's rougher waters, but I doubt it could prevent a drowning in a paddling pool either. As it turns out, self-affirmation is not a high scorer in terms of buoyancy ratings. The truth is, if we really need someone (or something) to tell us that it's going to be OK and that it's entirely acceptable to dare to dream, maybe we don't need an AI. Maybe we just need a hug. A real one. From a human.