Usrecords

AI Simulation Gives People a Glance of Their Potential Future Self

In an initial user study, the researchers discovered that after interacting 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 maker yet, however AI can be a kind of virtual time maker. We can utilize this simulation to assist people think more about the repercussions 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 signed up with 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 exist at the IEEE Conference on Frontiers in Education.

A practical simulation

Studies about conceiving one’s future self return to at least the 1960s. One early technique focused on improving future self-continuity had people compose letters to their future selves. More just recently, scientists used virtual reality goggles to help people visualize future versions of themselves.

But none of these methods were very interactive, limiting the effect they could have on a user.

With the arrival of generative AI and big language designs like ChatGPT, the scientists saw an opportunity to make a simulated future self that could discuss somebody’s real goals and goals during a typical conversation.

“The system makes the simulation really sensible. Future You is a lot more detailed than what a person might come up with by simply imagining their future selves,” says Maes.

Users begin by responding to a series of questions about their existing lives, things that are essential to them, and goals for the future.

The AI system uses this details to develop what the call “future self memories” which supply a backstory the model pulls from when engaging with the user.

For instance, the chatbot could talk about the highlights of somebody’s future career or answer concerns about how the user got rid of a particular difficulty. This is possible since ChatGPT has been trained on substantial information including people talking about their lives, professions, and excellent and bad experiences.

The user engages with the tool in two methods: through self-questioning, when they consider their life and objectives as they construct their future selves, and revision, 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 a possibility to hear how a few of your experiences, which may still be mentally charged for you now, could be metabolized throughout time,” she says.

To help people visualize their future selves, the system produces an age-progressed image of the user. The chatbot is also designed to provide vibrant responses using expressions like “when I was your age,” so the simulation feels more like an actual future version of the person.

The capability to listen from an older version of oneself, rather than a generic AI, can have a more powerful favorable influence on a user pondering an uncertain future, Hershfield says.

“The interactive, vibrant components of the platform offer the user an anchor point and take something that might result in distressed rumination and make it more concrete and efficient,” he adds.

But that realism could backfire if the simulation relocates a negative direction. To prevent this, they guarantee Future You cautions users that it shows just one possible variation of their future self, and they have the firm to change their lives. Providing alternate answers to the questionnaire yields an absolutely different discussion.

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

Aiding self-development

To examine Future You, they performed a user research study with 344 people. Some users communicated with the system for 10-30 minutes, while others either engaged with a generic chatbot or only filled out studies.

Participants who utilized Future You had the ability to develop a closer relationship with their ideal future selves, based on a statistical analysis of their responses. These users also reported less stress and anxiety about the future after their interactions. In addition, Future You users said the discussion felt genuine and that their values and beliefs appeared consistent in their simulated future identities.

“This work forges a new path by taking a well-established mental strategy to visualize times to come – an avatar of the future self – with cutting edge AI. This is precisely the type of work academics need to be concentrating on as innovation to construct virtual self models combines with big language models,” states Jeremy Bailenson, the Thomas More Storke Professor of Communication at Stanford University, who was not involved with this research study.

Building off the results of this preliminary user research study, the scientists continue to fine-tune the methods they establish context and prime users so they have conversations that help build a more powerful sense of future self-continuity.

“We wish to assist the user to speak about specific topics, rather than asking their future selves who the next president will be,” Pataranutaporn says.

They are likewise including safeguards to prevent individuals from misusing the system. For instance, one might envision a business developing a “future you” of a prospective consumer who accomplishes some terrific result in life since they acquired a particular item.

Progressing, the scientists desire to study particular applications of Future You, possibly by enabling people to explore various careers or envision how their everyday choices might affect climate change.

They are likewise collecting data from the Future You pilot to better comprehend how people utilize the system.

“We don’t desire individuals to end up being dependent on this tool. Rather, we hope it is a meaningful experience that assists them see themselves and the world differently, and assists with self-development,” Maes states.