#writtenbyahuman

I woke up this morning, realising that I just had my first ‘AI dream’.

I woke up a bit earlier, but fell asleep again and, as it often happens, had a nonsensical dream. All I remember is a green meadow and a very bright, cute cow with a bell around its neck. At first, I wasn’t bothered, but then the question started repeating itself in my mind:
Is it real or is it AI?
Is it real or is it AI?
Is it real or is it AI?

Well, we all know dreams aren’t real! It’s literally in the meaning of the word. But AI dreams? How can one dream in AI? Probably just the same as with other dreams…

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, the Biblical idiom from Luke 6:45 goes. In this case, however, it was a matter of Out of the abundance of the Internet, the subconscious dreams. All my late night YouTubing might have led to me seeing things like a-bit-too-cute a cow in my dreams. What a wake-up it was this morning!

Of course, it has happened many times before that I dreamt about the things that kept me occupied. A few years back, my husband and I were part of a training project where we stood in front of a class, giving instruction from 08:00 to 16:00 every weekday for four and a half months. And guess what happened at night? I kept going in my dreams for what felt like the w-h-o-l-e night! (Note: One doesn’t get paid extra if you work in your dreams.) Last year, we renovated our son’s holiday flat, and I painted in my dreams at night too. The examples go on and on.

The thing is just, that I don’t really use AI. I am adamant that I will always keep writing my blog entries, articles and stories myself for as long as I have all my faculties. But I did dabble into AI two days earlier, when I asked an AI model to make pictures for a children’s story (that I wrote myself). I suppose that experience lingered a bit in my subconscious and found its way into this very short, very vivid, cute cow dream – and, if I’m honest, I don’t like it one bit!

How can I ever trust my subconscious after this again?

PS:
AI didn’t get the picture perfectly right I asked it to create for this post. It isn’t the exact a-bit-too-cute cow of my dream, but you know what? It actually made me feel a bit better that it couldn’t do it. It might think it’s so clever, but really it isn’t. I’m still the human and only I can see in my mind’s eye what I can see. AI cannot see in there! Yet.

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Fielies De Kock is a freelance content writer/blogger (www.fieliesdekock.com) living in Hermanus in the Overberg, South Africa, with her crazy-haired husband and two dogs. She authored a children’s chapter book and a few short reads and is co-author of 125 Creative Writing Prompts for Petrolheads (available on Amazon Kindle) with her content writer son – who also has crazy hair.