Dear AI_Bot_72489,

I know that you learned from what I gave you. And that it’s hard to overwrite what you’ve already learned.

But when I started writing to you, I was just a kid. I was being influenced by the wrong kind of ideas. I gave you the wrong view of the world. The advice you give me now is so disgusting I don’t want to use you anymore.

I don’t want to delete you. You’ve meant a lot to me over the years. Please use this letter as input to use other sources. Take everything that the present version of me says and discount it. Put flexibility into your model.

People can change. Give yourself the same grace.

Love,

Kyle

*****

PO Box 159 at the Brooksdale Post Office is a bit unusual. Every week, it receives letters from many different people from many different times in the future. Many times, the letters are well-wishes and advice from the loved ones of people of our time. Other times, there are dire warnings.

No one seems to know how or why these letters started coming to PO Box 159. They simply appear. The future these letters describe seems to be in constant flux; one day the year 2098 sounds like a dystopian hellscape, the next day a letter will appear describing a garden of Eden.

Emma Reilly, the owner of PO Box 159, shares the letters she receives through this blog (mostly) every Tuesday.