People Spoke To Older Versions Of Themselves Using An AI Chatbot: It Decreased Anxiety And Boosted Motivation Among Users
Thanks to the Future You project, people can talk to an older version of themselves about their lives, hopes, and dreams using an advanced chatbot powered by artificial intelligence (AI). They can even see what their face might look like in the future.
The Future You project was created by a team of researchers at MIT Media Lab and international institutions. It uses AI to generate a simulation of a person’s 60- to 70-year-old self.
Through a text interface, users can chat with the AI about various topics, such as their beliefs, outlook on life, and advice on how to reach their goals based on their current life circumstances. The purpose of its creation was to offer people a sense of connection to their future selves.
The ability to listen to the feedback your older self is giving you, instead of a generic AI chatbot, can make you feel better about the years to come.
“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,” said Hal Hershfield, a co-author of the study and a professor at UCLA.
To use Future You, a selfie needs to be uploaded, and then an image generation model called StyleClip will use age-progression models to predict what the person will look like at the age of 60. Features like gray hair and wrinkles are added for effect.
The user must also answer questions about their demographic, current state of life, and goals and concerns for the future to provide training data for Future You’s chatbot.
Then, the answers are fed into OpenAI’s ChatGPT, running GPT-3.5. It will make predictions about the user’s future based on their answers and training data from a broader archive of people discussing their life experiences, careers, relationships, and more.
In addition, the chatbot will embody a persona based on the user’s responses. It will answer the user’s questions about what their life might look like and give guidance on how to achieve their desired future.
Rido – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
The adopted persona is convincing and relatable because of the combination of data with a natural language processing architecture that maintains continuity and personalization.
The programmers of Future You made sure to protect users from any negative outcomes in their conversations with their future selves.
The system regularly reminds users that it presents only one possible future in regard to the questionnaire responses. Different answers can lead to completely different outcomes.
A total of 344 English speakers between the ages of 18 and 30 were selected for the project. They interacted with representations of their future selves for 10 to 30 minutes.
The majority of participants reported a reduction in their anxiety levels, an increase in motivation levels, and a stronger sense of connection with their future selves. The researchers believe this stronger sense can influence people’s long-term decisions.
The project was detailed in a paper published in the preprint database arXiv.
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