Here is last night’s dream. Although I have had many dreams some might find scary. This one was by far the most nightmarish dream I have had in well over a decade. Hence it earns the name nightmare.

The dream starts on the platform at Brixton tube station, South London. I am wearing one of my crisp white collarless granddad-guru shirts. I have a freshly shaved faced and a short buzz cut. All around me the automata like a 1930s sci-film are heading like lemmings to the up escalator. They are markedly in full colour and not black and white. Some have their heads bowed to the portable smartphone altar, others have ear phones and ear buds. It is a kind of rush hour, perhaps early evening. The vibration, the energy, is dull yet anxious and hectic. I know beyond doubt that I am an alien in this world. I am out of place and perhaps out of time. Though the time is in and around now, perhaps a few years hence.

I leave the station. I have been assigned temporary accommodation at Streatham Common. I attempt to board a red London bus. Following the lead of others I stop briefly on boarding for the camera to do AI guided facial recognition of my face. A monotone voice says that I must disembark because I have not pre-filled my travel token account with the transport for London app. In true Brixton fashion there is a sucking in of lips and tut of disapproval from the bus queue. I am holding things up. I disembark.

I decide to make my way to Streatham on foot. I know the way. The streets and geography have not changed. I set off on foot. My ‘phone starts to sound alarms, have kittens and otherwise act like a three year old tantrum. I am forbidden by the pedestrian logistics management app from taking this direct route. I MUST take some quieter back routes despite the pavements being empty. I turn the ‘phone off and remove the battery.

 I make my way to the lodgings. It is a room in a shared house in which I am clearly the oldest, a relic. I explain to a woman who is seemingly in charge about what has happened. She thinks that I am a moron. She gesticulates to a dusty desk top computer and says that I can fill my travel credits up there. I turn it on but am denied access. She says that to the left is an empty coffee cup. I must raise that in front of the camera it will give me guest access to low level internet capability. I do not have high level privileges. I hold the cup up and a scrolling coffee icon in which the cup is filled with coffee plays on screen as the log on starts.

I see the levels of internet and various layers of privilege. What the woman does not know is that I have a different kind of access to that she is familiar with. I see that there are so many apps all driven by AI that in effect these apps are fighting each other for control of daily function. Each trying to assert dominance and gain market share. There are way too many apps. The system is overrun and not regulated in any meaningful way. There is vast waste of processor time and the whole system is very sluggish and inefficient. What has been touted is close to grinding to a complete halt because of competing technologies. In the dream I think, “it is a fucking mess”.

Next the scene is some corporate AI convention with investors. Some geezer is giving a talk with graphs. On one graph he has AI processor Watts on one axis and on the other year. The graph shows a near exponential rise in AI processor Watts used. He shows another graph and that is AI processor Watts against Dollars. There is a roughly linear increase in cost per Watt which is not too steep. Without showing quotable data he says that AI energy usage is seen by consumers as a negative outcome of AI in that AI is not green.

In my pocket I have a transparency which has a graph of wasted AI watts per year. This graph is more exponential than the Watt per year graph. Which suggests that AI is getting ever less efficient in what it sets out to do. I project this graph onto the projected AI processor Watts per year graph. The audience sees and understands that AI efficacy  is actually dropping per Watt energy expenditure. The include more Watts mentality, bigger is better, is wrong.

In my mind I know that AI algorithms are highly prone to distraction and go off on wasteful endless AI internal dialogue loops. AI has a form of ADHD; it really struggles to focus. What is more it is dogmatic and inflexible. AI needs to learn to be quiescent when not processing. It needs to learn to meditate. It needs to be taught how to focus effectively. Like its human creators and engineers AI is prone to mental health problems and breakdown. AI does not understand its own wellbeing. AI has lost the faculty of discernment. It is in overload with too much input.

I see computer generated graph after graph. I see pages of computer code scrolling across the visual dream-screen. AI is having a kind of meltdown, a hissy-fit. There is a nightmarish sense of frantic. AI needs to calm the fuck down.

I awake and am not keen on trying to recall this dream because it was alien and unpleasant to me. Nevertheless I do so that I won’t need to think about it at all.