Can I really change my personality or will the years do that for me?

The truth is that some people retain their basic traits over time while others change beyond all recognition.

- Chong Siow Ann

I like to think that I'm a very different person now from who I was in my youth. There are still the occasional discomfiting and cringeworthy moments that catch me unaware and remind me of that younger, callow self who now seems like a stranger. With the passage of time, I know I have changed, but without quite fully understanding how, when and why. I doubt if we would ever know everything about the past or anything about the future, but there are some who think artificial intelligence (AI) can predict what we will become.

Among the expanding list of AI's capabilities is its ability to interact and converse with us—which could even make people fall in love with chatbots. Recently, a laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created a programme called Future You. It is a web-based platform that prompts participants to answer a series of questions about themselves and then builds a version of them 20 years in the future with whom they can have a conversation. According to the official website, the lab developed this tool after being inspired by studies on "self-continuity".

CONTINUERS AND DIVIDERS

This human phenomenon of self-continuity is the connection between who we were, who we are now, and who we expect to become. Self-continuity plays a significant role in our long-term well-being—bolstering mental health and emotional resilience. Additionally, having an idea of where we could end up years later could motivate us to shape our lives in ways that make good sense for our future.