AI researchers build ‘future self’ chatbot to inspire wise life choices
If your carefully crafted life plan has been scuppered by sofa time, bingeing on fast food, drinking too much and failing to contribute to the company pension, it may be time for a chat with your future self.
Without ready 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 dishes out observations and pearls of wisdom. The aim is to encourage people to give more thought today to the person they want to be tomorrow.
With a profile picture that is digitally aged to show youthful users as wrinkly, white-haired seniors, the chatbot generates plausible synthetic memories and draws on a user’s present aspirations to spin tales about its successful life.
“The goal is to promote long-term thinking and behaviour change,” said 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 optimise for their long-term wellbeing and life outcomes.”
