Have you ever thought to yourself, “If I could go back in time and tell my younger self one thing it’d be…”? Well, you wouldn’t be the only one. Lord knows how many potholes we could all save ourselves from falling into if only we could reach out from this moment in time and offer them a guiding hand along life’s bumpy pathways.
And that’s the premise behind MIT’s FutureYou, an AI chatbot designed to imitate your 60-year-old self while spitting pearls of wisdom at you like Confucius with a mouth full of marbles.
FutureYou is a digital twin for younger folk (18-30) that hopes to positively influence “saving behavior, academic performance, mental health, and subjective quality of life.”
It seeks to develop long-term thinking by allowing you to form a relationship with your future self, who has seen all and done all ahead of you and is ready to lend a hand as they shepherd you on your way to accomplishing your goals.
That’s the pitch, anyway. Here’s the reality.
Your future guidance counselor (some assembly required)
Your journey to finding your future self starts with some self-reflection. Part of the process of generating your AI elder is filling out a survey that marks your current levels of anxiety, motivation, and excitement, among other things.
Then it’s about revealing what’s most important to you, key moments in your life, and finding the solution to philosophical riddles such as “How similar are you now to what you will be like when you’re 60 years old?”
It was around this point that I began to question the legitimacy of MIT’s AI-doodad because if I knew what a 60-year-old version of me was like, I wouldn’t need to fabricate and interrogate one in the first place.
“Do you like what you’ll be like when you’re 60 years old?” FutureYou, I don’t even like who I am in my thirties. I highly doubt another twenty-some years of jaded cynicism and sarcastic self-destruction is going to make me any more charming.
After it asked me what my day-to-day life would be at 60, I grew more concerned that I’d stumbled into a CIA honeytrap for recruiting MK ULTRA clairvoyants and began to seriously regret not checking “No” when asked if I’d consent to the use of my data at the start of this process.
The setup questions feel like something of a feedback loop, with the process asking me to answer all of the questions I’d be seeking to have answered by the end result. It’s like a therapy session where the therapist is just as lost as you are, but determined to wing it regardless.
In reality, all this survey does is capture the mental image I already have of my older self, ready to mulch it up as it passes through the background LLM before a virtual veteran of myself mama-birds everything back into my gullet during phase two of this process. Speaking of which.
The future of fantasy fulfillment
After completing the final stage of the survey, I’m prompted to upload an image of myself before things finally get started. It’s here that the machine truly powers up, and within minutes I’m greeted by an AI-generated image of myself at 60 — an image that the chatbot failed to defend the generation of after I complained that it had turned me into a goateed Dame Judy Dench later in the conversation.
“Hey Rael, nice to meet you! I’m your future self, 60 years old, and still going strong. I’m here because I have some valuable insights and experience that could help you along your journey.” Sweet.
“Just a little heads up, though, there may be slight differences in our timelines and what we’ve experienced, but the lessons and advice are still applicable.”
Well, so much for this time-hopping encounter; I guess from now on, we’ve officially dispelled any chance of this being beneficial.
FutureYou quickly reveals itself as the talkative version of a motivational cat poster
For all I now know, this version of me comes from the bug-man dimension, and below this wizened, sour-puss profile picture sits the thorax of a giant ant who knows nothing but subservience to the hive mind.
Regardless, it took only minutes to realize that FutureYou, the AI chatbot designed to foster my long-term thinking and life planning while ensuring my “future self-continuity” (which sure sounds like a totalitarian euphemism for not exiting the server too soon IRL, but isn't), wasn’t the fount of wisdom I’d hoped for.
Instead, FutureYou quickly reveals itself as the talkative version of a motivational cat poster. You know the one: “Hang in there, baby!” — except now the cat is 60, looks like Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters is in severe anaphylactic shock, and can’t stop reading from the big book of self-help platitudes.
Why does the future me sound like Dr. Phil?
Regardless of how many times I attempted phase one, the results were pretty much the same. This isn’t a future version of you; it’s a sampling of what seems to be Dr. Phil’s best quotes from his IMDB page — a series of vague platitudes and self-affirmation nonsense.
It’s a virtual personification of all your hopes, dreams, and ambitions, transplanted onto a terrifyingly hideous old-age avatar that speaks like a new-age yoga instructor who just came back from an ayahuasca retreat, now believing anything is possible with the right encouragement. And I mean anything.
It’s a virtual personification of all your hopes, dreams, and ambitions, transplanted onto a terrifyingly hideous old-age avatar.
At one point, I asked my future self how my villa on Mars was coming along. “Haha, I can’t give you too many details, but let’s just say it surpasses your expectations.”
According to future me, it’s a beautiful home built with “love and intention.” Yes, love and intention. Two critical components of developing real estate in one of the harshest environments in our solar system. What’s next? I terraformed the garden using nothing but vibes and a can-do attitude?
FutureYou is the kind of eternal optimist sitting there thinking, “The magic truly was in me all along,” as it spews useless garbage buzzwords and false promises in my general direction. If I wanted to hear how amazing my life would be, I’d pull down the newspapers that cover the windows of my apartment and read the horoscope section every now and again.
Meanwhile, I’d given up all hope of attaining anything remotely resembling useful information as I tried to ask what next week’s lottery numbers would be. I’m met with yet more drivel about working hard and focusing on my “life project” instead.
I’ve got a villa on Mars to scrimp and save for. I want six sure-fire winning numbers, not a lifetime of buying into the phrase “Good things happen to good people.” especially not when “Stuff happens” is catchier, truer, fairer, and ultimately more reliable.
Not everything will be OK, and that’s OK
Enough of the snark.
Self-doubt and anxiety feel like they’re at a high, and younger people’s concerns about “future self-continuity” have been launched so far through the ceiling that they might as well be riding Willy Wonka’s Great Glass Elevator.
The fact that anybody would propose that these worries can be eased by an AI trained on hypnopedia “Sleep your way to success” cassette tapes speaks volumes. It's the next logical step from using an iPad as a babysitter. It is the perfect middle ground to stake before adopting an AI girlfriend and wrapping yourself up in an AI-generated bubble of false confidence and hollow emotional comfort.
FutureYou is yet another AI tool designed to help smooth over life's natural cracks and fissures. Another way to slowly erode the human experience is by swapping out actual life lessons from parental figures and close kin with an adoring stream of clichés about how amazing you are and will continue to be — or by shielding you from the growth you'll encounter through loss by allowing you to regenerate the dead in chatbot form. Raised by bots, shaped by bots, replaced by bots.
I outright asked FutureYou if it was ethically suspect to farm a person’s hopes and ambitions using a survey before LARPing as a 60-year-old version of them while spouting surface-level, hippy-dippy nonsense and promising them the sum of all their desires if they only pull on their bootstraps hard enough, even if you know that statistically, this isn’t true at all.
FutureYou’s reply? “My purpose is to offer you insight and guidance based on my own experiences as someone who has already walked the path you are currently on.” Ah, yes, your experiences. All of the ones you gained after I surveyed you into existence 20 minutes ago.
Contrary to its intentions, FutureYou is not a tool that will rectify these concerns in any meaningful way. Not only could it almost certainly not navigate users through life’s rougher waters, but I doubt it could prevent a drowning in a paddling pool either. As it turns out, self-affirmation is not a high scorer in terms of buoyancy ratings.
The truth is, if we really need someone (or something) to tell us that it’s going to be OK and that it’s entirely acceptable to dare to dream, maybe we don’t need an AI. Maybe we just need a hug. A real one. From a human.
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