AI Simulation Gives People a Glance of Their Potential Future Self

In an initial user study, the researchers found that after connecting with Future You for about half an hour, people reported reduced anxiety and felt a more powerful sense of connection with their future selves.

“We do not have an actual time machine yet, but AI can be a type of virtual time machine. We can use this simulation to assist people believe more about the consequences of the choices they are making today,” says Pat Pataranutaporn, a current Media Lab doctoral graduate who is actively establishing a program to advance human-AI interaction research at MIT, and co-lead author of a paper on Future You.

Pataranutaporn is signed up with on the paper by co-lead authors Kavin Winson, a researcher at KASIKORN Labs; and Peggy Yin, a Harvard University undergraduate; in addition to 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, teacher of marketing, behavioral choice making, and psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles. The research study will exist at the IEEE Conference on Frontiers in Education.

A sensible simulation

Studies about one’s future self return to at least the 1960s. One early technique targeted at improving future self-continuity had people compose letters to their future selves. More just recently, researchers made use of virtual truth goggles to help individuals imagine future versions of themselves.

But none of these approaches were extremely interactive, restricting the effect they might have on a user.

With the development of generative AI and big language models like ChatGPT, the researchers saw a chance to make a simulated future self that could discuss somebody’s real objectives and aspirations during a typical discussion.

“The system makes the simulation very realistic. Future You is much more in-depth than what a person could create by just picturing their future selves,” states Maes.

Users begin by addressing a series of questions about their present lives, things that are very important to them, and goals for the future.

The AI system uses this information to develop what the scientists call “future self memories” which offer a backstory the design pulls from when communicating with the user.

For circumstances, the chatbot might talk about the highlights of someone’s future career or response questions about how the user got rid of a particular difficulty. This is possible due to the fact that ChatGPT has been trained on comprehensive data including people speaking about their lives, professions, and great and bad experiences.

The user engages with the tool in two methods: through introspection, when they consider their life and objectives as they construct their future selves, and memory, when they contemplate whether the simulation shows who they see themselves ending up being, says Yin.

“You can think of Future You as a story search area. You have an opportunity to hear how some of your experiences, which might still be mentally charged for you now, might be metabolized throughout time,” she states.

To assist individuals imagine their future selves, the system generates an age-progressed image of the user. The chatbot is also developed to offer brilliant answers utilizing expressions like “when I was your age,” so the simulation feels more like an actual future version of the person.

The capability to take guidance from an older version of oneself, rather than a generic AI, can have a stronger favorable influence on a user contemplating an uncertain future, Hershfield states.

“The interactive, brilliant parts of the platform give the user an anchor point and take something that could lead to anxious rumination and make it more concrete and productive,” he adds.

But that realism might backfire if the simulation moves in an unfavorable direction. To prevent this, they make sure Future You warns users that it reveals just one potential variation of their future self, and they have the company to change their lives. Providing alternate responses to the questionnaire yields a totally various conversation.

“This is not a prophesy, however rather a possibility,” Pataranutaporn says.

Aiding self-development

To assess Future You, they conducted a user research study with 344 people. Some users connected with the system for 10-30 minutes, while others either interacted with a generic chatbot or only submitted surveys.

Participants who used Future You were able to build a better relationship with their ideal future selves, based on an analytical analysis of their actions. These users likewise reported less stress and anxiety about the future after their interactions. In addition, Future You users said the conversation felt genuine and that their values and beliefs seemed constant in their simulated future identities.

“This work creates a brand-new course by taking a reputable psychological strategy to imagine times to come – an avatar of the future self – with cutting edge AI. This is precisely the kind of work academics ought to be concentrating on as innovation to construct virtual self models combines with big language models,” says Jeremy Bailenson, the Thomas More Storke Professor of Communication at Stanford University, who was not involved with this research.

Building off the results of this preliminary user study, the researchers continue to tweak the ways they develop context and prime users so they have discussions that help build a stronger sense of future self-continuity.

“We want to assist the user to speak about particular topics, instead of asking their future selves who the next president will be,” Pataranutaporn says.

They are also adding safeguards to avoid people from misusing the system. For example, one could imagine a business producing a “future you” of a prospective consumer who accomplishes some excellent result in life due to the fact that they acquired a particular product.

Moving on, the scientists desire to study specific applications of Future You, perhaps by allowing individuals to explore various professions or imagine how their everyday options could impact environment change.

They are also gathering data from the Future You pilot to better understand how individuals use the system.

“We do not desire people to become based on this tool. Rather, we hope it is a significant experience that helps them see themselves and the world in a different way, and assists with self-development,” Maes says.