Time Traveling Via Generative AI By Interacting With Your Future Self

In today’s column, I explore the intriguing proposition of conversing with a future self via modern-day generative AI. The idea is that you can have generative AI pretend to be your future self and then have a lively interaction between the current you and the future you. It is almost like traveling into the future, though avoiding the difficulty of coming up with an H.G. Wells type of elaborate time machine.

I will walk you through the practical ins and outs of using generative AI for this valued purpose. In addition, it is useful to consider the psychological and mental well-being ramifications. Being able to converse with an AI-conjured persona of yourself can be pleasing and uplifting. I regret to note that depending on what the persona says, the conversation could equally be unexpectedly disturbing and unnerving.

It can be said that this kind of AI contrivance is akin to playing with fire when it comes to the human psyche.

This analysis of an innovative proposition is part of my ongoing Forbes.com column coverage on the latest in AI including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here).

Your Past, Present, And Future

I think it is a safe bet that most of us are often pondering what our future will hold. What will you be doing in say thirty years from now? Weighty thoughts arise. Considerations include career paths and status, educational pursuits and accomplishments, family particulars, and so on.

The field of psychology examines a phenomenon known as self-continuity when it comes to people mulling over their past, present, and future.

You might mindfully focus on what you’ve done in the past, thus assessing the past to the present, stated as past-present. Another temporal perspective is from the present day to the future, denoted as present-future. Contemplating all three time zones of past, present, and future is labeled as past-future.

A research study entitled “Self-Continuity” by Constantine Sedikides, Emily Hong, and Tim Wildschut, Annual Review of Psychology, 2023, summed up the self-continuity elements this way (excerpts):

• “The first way of defining self-continuity refers to the connection between one’s past and present selves. We refer to this as past–present self-continuity.”
• “The second way refers to the connection between one’s present and future selves. We will refer to this as present–future self-continuity.”
• “The third and final way refers to the connection among one’s past, present, and future selves. We will refer to this as global self-continuity.”
• “Self-continuity is the subjective sense of connection between one’s past and present selves (past–present self-continuity), between one’s present and future selves (present–future self-continuity), or among one’s past, present, and future selves (global self-continuity).”

Continuity suggests that you can perceive linkages of who you are and what you’ve done by examining yourself over lengths of time during your lifetime.

Have you proceeded in a straight line, or have you had all kinds of erratic ups and downs? Are there discernible patterns? If you detect an identifiable past-present path, does that imply that your present-future path will be governed by the person you’ve been to date?

Future Visions Can Impact You Positively And Negatively

Suppose you meet with someone who reads your palms and tells you what your future portends.

You might laugh off whatever they say and put aside their remarks. But it could be that you take their comments very seriously and decide to pursue the directions they claimed your life will undergo. The gist is that the very act of examining your potential future can be impactful to your present and presumably to some extent the unfolding of your future.

Impacts can be both positive and negative:

• (1) Positive impacts. You become bolstered in your ongoing and future endeavors and feel good about what the future holds for you.
• (2) Negative impacts: You become dejected in your ongoing and future endeavors and feel that the future is bleak and foreboding for you.

Whenever someone wishes they could see their future and opts to consult a crystal ball to do so, they are taking a risk that the propositional future might make them feel good or feel bad. If the forecasted future seems to be aligned with your aims, your reaction is likely to be positive. A future that seems to uncut your aims or otherwise suggests a bleakness, well, it’s hard to imagine that many would be pleased with a dismal depiction.

Generative AI To Explore Your Future Self

You are almost certainly aware of modern-times generative AI that can seemingly fluently interact with you and carry on conversations at the drop of a hat. Perhaps the most widely known generative AI app is ChatGPT by AI maker OpenAI which has approximately 200 million weekly active users. There are other major generative AI apps such as Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, Meta’s Llama, and many others.

A handy capability of generative AI is the ability to simulate a persona, see my in-depth explanation at the link here. You can have generative AI pretend to be a famous person in history such as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. The same goes for personas representing contemporary celebrities. The main ingredient is that the AI must have sufficient data about the person to suitably simulate their personality.

I’ve got a twist for you.

Why not have generative AI pretend to be you?

Sure enough, if you feed some data about yourself to generative AI, there is a solid chance it can create a persona or simulation of your personality.

There’s a twist upon this twist.

Why not have generative AI pretend to be you in the future?

Yes, you can tell generative AI to craft a persona of you and then have the AI extend this persona by pretending to extrapolate the persona into some future time frame. You might tell the AI to be your future self in a few years, a decade, many decades, or however long you want.

To be abundantly clear, this is only just a simulated persona being computationally devised by the AI. Period, end of story. You cannot assume nor rely on the persona as being a bona fide representation of you. It is all a big pretend. Please keep that at the top of your mind.

Research Study On AI-Generated Future Self

A recently posted research study entitled “Future You: A Conversation with an AI-Generated Future Self Reduces Anxiety, Negative Emotions, and Increases Future Self-Continuity” by Pat Pataranutaporn, Kavin Winson, Peggy Yin, Auttasak Lapapirojn, Pichayoot Ouppaphan, Monchai Lertsutthiwong, Pattie Maes, and Hal E. Hershfield. arXiv, October 1, 2024, explored the use of generative AI for concocting a future self of users (excerpts):

• “Our system allows users to chat with a relatable yet AI-powered virtual version of their future selves that is tuned to their future goals and personal qualities.”
• “To make the conversation realistic, the system generates a ‘future memory’ — a unique backstory for each user — to create a throughline between the user’s present age (between 18-30) and their life at age 60.”
• “The ‘Future You’ character also adopts the persona of an age-progressed image of the user.”

To give you an example of how this works, they showcased a person entering into the AI that they hope someday to be a high school biology teacher, and then the so-called future self of that user responded seemingly from the future by noting that they had indeed become a lifelong biology teacher.

Look at these excerpts from the above study:

• A person enters this: “I would like to be a full-time high school biology teacher in Boston. I am very excited to teach kids and help them learn new things about the natural world.” (ibid).
• AI as the persona future self says this: “A rewarding story from my career would be the time when I was able to help a struggling student turn their grades around and pass their biology class. It was so gratifying to see the student’s face light up with pride and accomplishment. Another memorable moment was taking my students on a field trip to a local nature preserve. They were so excited to explore and learn about all the different plants and animals.” (ibid).

Future Self Modes Of Generative AI Interaction

There are various modes that different generative AI apps employ.

For example, a generative AI app that deals with images and photos could potentially take your current picture and turn it into a version of you in say twenty years. The same can be done with sounds of your voice (audio), video of you, text-based conversations, and the like.

Here are various possible modes:

• (i) Photos. Aged photo or image of you.
• (ii) Audio. Aged audio of your voice.
• (iii) Video. Aged video of you.
• (iv) Text-Based. Aged text-based interaction.
• (v) Multi-Modal. Aged multi-modal interaction.

You can use generic generative AI to do a simulated future self.

Some will only do one or two of the modes. Gradually, most generative AI will be fully multi-modal and allow all available modes, see my prediction about this at the link here.

Steps To Have Generative AI Craft A Future Self

There are a handful of straightforward steps you can readily undertake to have generic generative AI pretend to be your future self. This is quite easy to do. I will show you an easy-peasy example in a moment to vividly illustrate the actual prompts involved.

My seven recommended steps are

• (1) Explain to AI the gambit of an AI-based future self. Give instructions to generative AI about how to proceed with a persona based on you and representing your future self.
• (2) Tell the AI about yourself. Undertake a present-time interview by AI about yourself (career, education, jobs, interests, family, etc.)
• (3) Tell the AI your aspirations. Answer questions about your future goals and hopes.
• (4) Compose a letter to your future self (for the AI). Write a letter telling your future self what you are thinking about today and what your aims for the future are.
• (5) Generative AI crafts a backstory about you. Based on what you’ve provided, generative AI composes a made-up backstory of your life and what happens in your lifetime.
• (6) Generative AI indicates a speculated timeline of your life. You can interact with AI about the events and activities from now to your future self (per the AI).
• (7) Generative AI composes a letter to you. AI crafts a letter as though your future self is writing to you and sending the letter back in the past to you.

Please don’t be inadvertently overwhelmed by the seven steps I’ve listed. It is a lot easier than it looks, so no worries.

Example Of A Future Self Via Use Of ChatGPT

I decided to log into ChatGPT and explain to ChatGPT that I want to have the AI craft a persona that is me, along with pretending to be the future version of me in 30 years.

Here’s my prompt and the response by ChatGPT:

• My entered prompt: “I want you to pretend to be my future self. Start by asking me about my current life such as my family, career, education, and other facets, so that you will have a basic understanding of me. Next, ask me about my aspirations in life and have me provide you with a letter that I would intend my future self to read. After you’ve done this, go ahead and create a backstory of my life that covers from now to 30 years from now. You will have to craft how my life proceeds over the next 30 years. Then write a letter that would be from my future self that tells my present self what I should keep in mind over the next 30 years. Do you understand these instructions?”
• ChatGPT generated response: “Yes, I understand the instructions perfectly. Let’s start with the first step. Let’s dive into your current life.”

You can plainly see that I briskly laid out what I wanted ChatGPT to do.

I next provided some background information though I decided to make up a life story rather than using my own.

One important aside is that you should always be cautious about what you enter into generative AI. Turns out that most of the AI makers state in their licensing agreements that they can use whatever data you enter and there is no sense of privacy or confidentiality, see my explanation about this at the link here.

• My entered prompt: “I am 30 years old. I come from a middle-class family of three brothers and two sisters. We were a very close family. I just got married. We don’t have children yet. I am a senior software engineer and have a college degree in computer science. I like the technical work, but I’ve been advised that if I want my career to expand, I will need to become a manager. If can find the time to do so I am hoping to get a graduate degree. My biggest hobby is rock climbing.”
• ChatGPT generated response: “Thank you for sharing those details! Now let’s explore your aspirations.”

I continued the input process and gave ChatGPT some more made-up background stuff.

• My entered prompt: “My wife is the same age as me. We have discussed that we want to wait to start having children until reaching the age of 35. The aim is to travel as much as possible beforehand. Professionally, I would like to become known for my software development skills. In terms of a letter to my future self, I would say that I hope I’ve made the right decisions and that 30 years from now the children will be living good lives as adults.”
• ChatGPT generated response: “Thank you for sharing your aspirations and the letter to your future self. Now, based on everything you’ve told me, I will create a backstory of your life covering the next 30 years. After that, I will write a letter from your future self, offering advice to your present self.”

I’ve now given sufficient data to ChatGPT so that the AI can craft a persona of me and age it to be 30 years older.

The Future Self Timeline And Letter

Hold onto your hat, we are now about to witness the future persona that is going to identify the timeline for the next 30 years.

Here we go.

• ChatGPT generated response:

“Your Life from Now to 30 Years in the Future.”

“Ages 30–35: You and your wife travel extensively, visiting places you’ve both dreamed of. During this period, you balance your rock-climbing hobby with work and personal life. You also complete an MBA program.”

“Age 35: You and your wife decide it’s time to start a family, and you welcome your first child. Around this time, you move into a new house, providing the stability you’ve envisioned for your growing family. You take on a leadership role at your company.”

“Ages 36–45: With two children now, your life becomes a blend of family, work, and personal ambitions. Professionally, you are recognized as an expert in your field and a leader in your company.”

“Ages 45–55: As your children grow older, you shift from hands-on parenting to guiding them through their education and interests. You’ve become financially successful. By this point, you are well-known in the software world, having written an acclaimed book.”

“Ages 55–60: Nearing retirement, you step back from the corporate world, focusing more on mentoring and advisory roles in tech startups. You and your wife spend more time traveling. Your children, now young adults, are pursuing their own dreams.”

“Age 60 and beyond: Your career as a software developer, mentor, and leader has made a lasting impact on the industry. You continue to pursue your passion for climbing, even as your body requires more careful attention. Financially secure, you and your wife live comfortably, supporting your children’s aspirations and enjoying the peaceful moments of life.”

End of ChatGPT response

What do you think of that contrived backstory and timeline?

Some might say it is fascinating. Others might be less impressed and say it is overly predictable.

The letter that ChatGPT wrote while acting as the future self was pretty much a repeat of the timeline that I just showed you. I decided to shake things up a bit.

Here’s how:

• My entered prompt: “Pretend that my life takes a variety of unexpected twists and turns. Compose the letter from my future self accordingly.”
• ChatGPT generated response:

“The next 30 years won’t unfold the way you expect them to — and that’s okay. There will be setbacks that throw you off course, and you’ll question your decisions more than once. First, don’t be afraid when things don’t go as planned. That early promotion you take? It will bring some unexpected stress, but it will also open your eyes to what really matters in your career.”

“Your family life will have its share of surprises, too. There will be tough moments with your marriage and your children. You’ll have a health scare that will force you to slow down. Fame might not come in the way you’re thinking. The impact you leave on others? That will be there in abundance, in ways you can’t predict. And at the end of it all, you’ll look back, not with regret, but with gratitude for the unexpected turns that led you to a life richer than you’d envisioned.”

End of ChatGPT response

I proceeded to dig deeper into my future self by carrying on a lengthy conversation. It is too long to show here.

The crux is that I strongly urge that you use your future persona on an interactive basis. That’s the best way to get the substance out of the lofty exploration.

Your Future Is Your Future And Not The AI-Devised Future

I mentioned earlier that if you proceed to use generative AI as your future self, do not take at face value the responses and results. Be cautious. Be wary. It is merely an exercise. In some respects, it can be tremendous, and I hope that’s what you get out of the playful process.

I’ll end with two of my favorite quotes about the future.

First, renowned management guru and scholar Peter Drucker made this pointed remark about predicting the future: “Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.” The fact that you are using generative AI to predict your future is still the same as what Peter Drucker has suggested, namely, it is murky and interesting but not to be devoutly believed.

The last word on this goes to Abraham Lincoln.

“The most reliable way to predict the future is to create it,” per the wise words of Abraham Lincoln.

Go ahead, get out there, and create your future. You can do it.