What if an AI could record and play back your dreams? Like many of the AI topics we cover, this probably sounds like science fiction nonsense. But dream-recording AI technology might be closer than you think. At least, Dr. Peter Bentley seems to think so.
Writing for BBC Science Focus, Dr. Bentley delves quite thoughtfully into the question of whether AI can record dreams. In other words, it's not a question of if AI can do this, but when. In fact, scientists are already exploring ways to record dreams and brainwaves.
Now, keep in mind that the bulk of this work was published last year as part of a Japanese research study that demonstrated that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners could be used to classify different choices in the brain while sleeping, but maybe one day we could create an AI that uses the same information to record our dreams.
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Of course, as Dr. Bentley points out in his article, creating such an AI would require a lot of fMRI data, but given how quickly AI research and development is moving, it wouldn't be all that surprising to hear that someone, somewhere, is working on this – except, at least not as far as we know publicly.
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But the data is already there: Research has already recorded thousands of hours of fMRI brain activity as part of studies of conscious brain activity while listening to spoken word, reading text, and watching videos, so now all that's needed is for someone to come along and build a dream-recording AI that can play it all back.
We'll just have to wait and see if anyone can make that happen anytime soon.
