AI and the Subconscious Mind
You might be shocked to read these two words in a single sentence: AI and the subconscious. What could they have in common that makes it plausible they could be manifestations of each other?
If you are well-versed on the topic of the subconscious, you may notice that it is opposite to our conscious mind in many ways. The subconscious is abstract, emotional, and imaginative, while the conscious is linear, logical, and thinks in words.
1s and 0s
Nothing in a computer seems to possibly relate to the hard-to-grasp nature of the subconscious mind. A computer's brain, the CPU, thinks in 1s or 0s. We can say that this relates to the conscious mind's logical thinking in us. However, with the new advent of AI technologies, specifically generative AI, we see how it is completely opposite in concept to the older linear left-brain thinking of a computer.
Similarities between the subconscious and gen ai
First of all, the subconscious is responsible for the dreams we have and experience; that's a commonly known fact. Now we propose that generative AI, with its image and video producing capabilities, like those of the subconscious, are representative of each other. Look at these similarities:
When you are in a dream, usual or lucid, your hands are distorted most of the time. They weave and disappear, increase and decrease in number.
When in a lucid dream or a usual dream, it is a well-known fact that we can't read words or letters. Reading is in the domain of the left brain, which is the conscious aspect of ourselves. Words appear hazy and blurry; you can't see them. Ask any generative AI to produce a picture with words in it, and you will see how poorly it does it.
When you are in a lucid dream or a usual dream, you can't really look in a mirror. You wake up. Guess what? It's the same for Generative AI; it cannot generate mirror reflections in images properly.
Generative AI music platforms are strangely good at synthesizing music. Maybe a little too good, as some music artists have claimed that AI outperformed them at their own songs.
AI Machine learning models are trained using Neural Networks.
proposal
You can try it out for yourself. We still haven't mentioned the big elephant(s) in the room. Do you see the strong link between imagination and creativity, which has for a long time been associated strictly with the subconscious, is now being associated with AI? You might be thinking, how does an AI think? Surprisingly... just like the subconscious mind thinks. The subconscious mind does not "reason" per se. According to Carl Jung, there exists a collective unconscious. One part of the collective unconscious comprises the emotions and reactions our ancestors went through. Those were stored in their subconscious, and then we inherit them. In the same way, we gather experiences in our daily lives too. The subconscious makes its yes-no decisions based on the data it has been trained on. Remember that the subconscious stores everything. Alternatively, if you think about AI, it works in the same way. AI gets trained on massive amounts of data; for example, dog pictures. Those pictures are labeled "dog," then the AI model will be one that recognizes dogs. Does it "understand" what a dog is? No. It just knows this = dog. Just like our primitive subconscious mind: this = eat, this = avoid, etc.
Will AI surpass humans in the near future? What will happen when computers unite their logical and creative sides, corresponding to the heart and mind of a human? Read about it in this article.
