While several individuals may want to get the chance to speak with themselves as a child once more, one woman took this desire to a whole new level. According to IFL Science, she made an AI or artificial intelligence chatbot that mirrors her childhood self. This was accomplished by teaching the chatbot entries from her childhood diary.
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Woman Has a Real-Time Conversation With Her Inner Child
i kept diaries for about 10+ years of my life, writing almost everyday — about my dreams, fears, secrets
the content ranged from complaining about homework, to giddiness i felt from talking to my crush
some days were very mundane, some rather insightful pic.twitter.com/CzA1C20U4a— michelle huang (@michellehuang42) November 27, 2022
Michelle Huang, the woman behind this endeavor, shared what she did through Twitter. According to the Daily Mail, she nonchalantly mentioned how she made a chatbot to have a real-time conversation with the childhood version of herself.
The chatbot was created through the OpenAI model GPT-3 and other material sources with more than ten years' worth of diary entries.
Huang then had conversations with her chatbot creation. She also assigned tasks such as creating a letter for her future self.
after scribing a ton of journal entries and feeding them into the model, i got working responses that felt eerily similar to how i think i would have responded during that time
— michelle huang (@michellehuang42) November 27, 2022
first, i asked her a bunch of questions about her about her worldview: pic.twitter.com/u4L62uGcWb
The conversations she shared with the bot covered young Michelle's ideas about making the world better and questions about whether excessive pressure had been placed on themselves.
In one of their conversations, Huang let the bot ask her any questions. The bot then asked how she had spent her life since she wrote the diary entries. The AI chatbot also complimented her for reaching where she is right now.
According to IFL Science, one of the things that particularly stood out for Huang was when she requested the chatbot to write a letter to future Huang. The letter includes hopes for older Huang to find what she is passionate about. It also lets older Huang know how proud "she" is.
In a Tweet, Huang mentioned how her conservation with "young Michelle" reminded her of her characteristics that have remained over time. Aside from that, it also made her remember the parts of her that had been buried as her life continued.
An AI Success Story With Potential for Healing
There was a similar AI project conducted in the past wherein a man wanted to create an AI version of his imaginary friend. However, things went haywire as the AI output he made wanted to kill him.
However, Huang's project was quite successful, unlike the previous AI project. Huang mentioned how therapeutic and positive the endeavor was as it had the potential to heal others and grant an opportunity for closure with the guilt of the past. According to IFL Science, she encouraged others to do what she did and even offered a tutorial on making an "inner child" AI chatbot.
i've received a lot of requests on how to replicate my AI experiment so here goes --
— michelle huang (@michellehuang42) November 29, 2022
[tutorial] how to create your own "inner child" chatbot using GPT-3https://t.co/lsWcUK7RYA
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