Ever Wanted to Talk to A Younger Self? ChatGPT Could Help

Michelle Huang, an artist-scientist from New York has found a way to train the AI chatbot ChatGPT to engage in real-time dialogue with her younger self.

Huang fed the AI behind the chatbot, which was OpenAI’s GPT-3, with her childhood journals, and got responses”eerily similar” to how she thought she would have responded then.

By asking the chatbot questions and letting the chatbot ask herself questions, Huang has gained a better understanding of her younger self and, in turn, got confirmed by her past self.

then, i gave her a chance to ask questions to me as well

this specific interaction felt very similar to a normal texting conversation – as if i were texting my past self in real time

i felt like i was reaching through a time portal, disguised as a chatbox pic.twitter.com/Amws9Is8Rp

— michelle huang (@michellehuang42) November 27, 2022

How did she feel after…

Huang shared her feelings after chatting with her younger self. It was deeply healing and therapeutic.

these interactions really elucidated the healing potential of this medium: of being able to send love back into the past, as well as receive love back from a younger self the stuckness becoming unstuck, of finding closure with past guilt or stories that we had of ourselves

Michelle Huang

Many are exhilarated by Huang’s findings and are excited about ChatGPT’S potential in the field of mental wellness therapies.

This is amazing! Thank you for sharing this experiment and giving us insight into who you are. I love that AI is able to be leveraged send love back into the past and allow it to rippled forward to the future now.

— Randay (@randay_eth) November 28, 2022

Are you familiar with IFS (internal family systems)? Some of what you did is similar.

Would be really cool for someone to make an AI bot that could guide IFS conversations similar to how you talked with yourself. https://t.co/mrCY0LLSOV

— Jason Evanish (@Evanish) November 28, 2022

How did she do it…

Many people asked Huang to share how she managed to make this happen. So she shared how she “trained” the AI in a later tweet.

i've received a lot of requests on how to replicate my AI experiment so here goes —

[tutorial] how to create your own "inner child" chatbot using GPT-3https://t.co/lsWcUK7RYA

— michelle huang (@michellehuang42) November 29, 2022

The process could be summarized as acquiring source material that reflects your “personality/voice/values” first, like writings, diaries, or chat history. Then feed the materials to the AI through GPT-3 playground and set your preferred training models.

The next is to craft a prompt in the playground and play with the parameter settings to set a tone. Once you hit submit, you can talk to your trained chatbot. And you could always refer to Huang’s original post for the step-by-step tutorial.

In case you get confused…

You might get confused with ChatGPT, the chatbot, and GPT-3, the AI behind the bot. The following interview with AI expert Chris Rowen might help you to understand the topic further.

Always ruminate and get stuck in the endless loops you are desperate to break through? Why not give AI a try if you have a dusty pile of old diaries or, even more conveniently, some archived chat history?