There's a reason time travel stories are so popular; given the opportunity to either reach backwards through time and right some wrongs, or peek ahead to see how it all turns out, I reckon many would jump at the chance. However, this story definitely isn't about time travel. Instead, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a chatbot that pretends to be your future 60-year-old self.
Called Future You, the chatbot uses survey answers from human participants in conjunction with a large language model (LLM) AI to create the illusion of having a natter with an older version of yourself. This project uses GPT3.5 from OpenAI, a company that continues to refine its LLMs so that they hallucinate less and may even count up to three. Future You itself was also inspired by a study investigating how increased "future self-continuity"—which, to put it non-academically, can be described as how well someone realises that their future is now—may positively influence a wide array of life choices and behaviour in the present.
