If your carefully laid life plan has been thrown into disarray by all the time spent sitting on the couch, eating too much fast food, drinking too much, and not contributing to the company pension, it might be time for a conversation with your future self .
Without direct access to a time machine, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have built an AI-powered chatbot that simulates a user’s older self and offers observations and pearls of wisdom. The goal is to encourage people to think more today about the person they want to be tomorrow.
With a profile photo digitally aged to show youthful users as wrinkly, white-haired seniors, the chatbot generates plausible synthetic memories and taps into a user’s current aspirations to tell stories about their successful life.
“The goal is to promote long-term thinking and behavior change,” says Pat Pataranutaporn, who works on the Future You project at MIT’s Media Lab. “This could motivate people to make wiser choices in the present that optimize for their long-term well-being and life outcomes.”
In one conversation, a student who wanted to become a biology teacher asked the chatbot, a simulated 60-year-old version of herself, about the most rewarding moment of her career. The chatbot said it was a retired biology teacher in Boston and recalled a special moment when he helped a struggling student improve his grades. “It was so satisfying to see the student’s face light up with pride and achievement,” the chatbot said.
To interact with the chatbot, users are first asked to answer a series of questions about themselves, their friends and family, the past experiences that shaped them, and the ideal life they envision for the future. They then upload a portrait image, which the program digitally ages to create a likeness of the user aged 60.
The program then feeds information from the user’s responses into a large language model that generates rich synthetic memories for the simulated older self. This ensures that when the chatbot responds to questions, it uses a coherent backstory.
The final component of the system is the chatbot itself, powered by OpenAI’s GPT3.5, which presents itself as a potentially older version of the user who can talk about their life experiences.
Pataranutaporn has had several conversations with his “future self,” but said the most profound was when the chatbot reminded him that his parents wouldn’t be around forever, so he needed to spend time with them while he could. “The session gave me a perspective that continues to impact me to this day,” he said.
Users are told that the “future self” is not a prediction, but rather a potential future self, based on the information they have provided. They are encouraged to explore different futures by changing their answers to the questionnaire.
According to a pre-printed scientific article about the projectStudies involving 344 volunteers found that conversations with the chatbot made people feel less anxious and more connected to their future selves. This stronger connection should encourage better life decisions, Pataranutaporn said, from focusing on specific goals and exercising regularly to eating healthy and saving for the future.
Ivo Vlaev, professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Warwick, said people often struggle to imagine their future selves, but this could lead to greater persistence in education, healthier lifestyles and wiser financial planning.
He called the MIT project a “fascinating application” of behavioral science principles. “It embodies the idea of nudges – subtle interventions designed to guide behavior in a positive way – by making the future self more salient and relevant to the present,” he said. “If implemented effectively, it has the potential to have a significant impact on the way people make decisions today with their future well-being in mind.”
“From a practical point of view, its effectiveness will likely depend on how well it can simulate meaningful and relevant conversations,” he added. “If users experience the chatbot as authentic and insightful, it can significantly influence their behavior. However, if the interactions feel superficial or gimmicky, the impact may be limited.”