AI and Chatting with Your Future Self, by Francis X. Maier

Earlier this month, in its regular Artificial Intelligence section, the Wall Street Journal ran a 2,000-word feature – for a newspaper, that’s serious ink – on the AI program “FutureYou.”  Developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), FutureYou allows you to talk with your 80-year-old self.  It also (regrettably) projects what you’ll look like.  The idea, according to the WSJ author, “is that if people can see and talk to their older selves, they will be able to think about them more concretely, and make changes now that will help them achieve the future they hope for.”

Thanks to FutureYou, the author discovered that she’d write a book, have six grandchildren, live in the suburbs, take up gardening, survive a health scare, make a solo visit to Japan, and take a family trip to Thailand.  In the years ahead, her FutureSelf said, she’d regret not starting a business.  She’d also need to jettison her doubts and fears.  And she would always work for positive change. . .however she might define that.  Immersed in an ongoing, engaging, intimate chat with herself, the author gradually achieved what the program’s creators call “future self continuity” – strong identification with her online octogenarian avatar. …