Large Numbers of People Report Horrific Nightmares About AI

Experts have long warned that artificial intelligence is making its way into every corner of our lives — but we didn't necessarily expect it to seep into our actual dreams.

According to a new survey funded by the mattress company Amerisleep, one in five people are regularly having dreams about AI. Unsurprisingly, most of those dreams were rooted in anxiety — and often, they were nightmares.

The mattress makers asked 1,000 people in the United States a battery of questions regarding AI and dreams. While a majority (56 percent) said they dream about AI less than once per month, nearly one in five said they have one AI dream in the same time period, and 16 percent said they have more than one. Nearly 10 percent, meanwhile, said they have at least one dream about the technology per week.

Though one in five of total survey respondents said they have AI dreams, that figure went up based on various demographics. Nearly a quarter of surveyed Gen Z-ers, or those born after 1997, said they've dreamed about AI — and of those, one in six said they have nightmares about losing their jobs to the technology (the survey summary didn't say how many Millennials and Gen Xers dreamt about AI).

According to Amerisleep's analysis, more than a quarter of participants said their biggest subconscious concern seemed to be about AI taking over the world. An additional 26 percent said they dreamt about speaking to AI as if it were a person, while 19 percent of total respondents said that losing jobs to the tech was a common dream scenario.

And speaking of, "Dream Scenario" star Nicholas Cage has, coincidentally enough, also been talking about AI nightmares recently.

During his acceptance speech at the Saturn Awards in February, for which he won "best actor in a film" for the picture, the inimitable thespian suggested that he found the rise of AI — and its ability to worm its way into our subconscious — one of the most "disturbing" things occurring in the world.

"I am a big believer in not letting robots dream for us," Cage said. "Robots cannot reflect the human condition for us."

Obviously, the lowkey Coppola was using "dream" in a more metaphysical sense to refer to art — but the sentiment stands, especially in light of the surreal dream-focused movie for which he was taking home the award.

"That is a dead end if an actor lets one AI robot manipulate his or her performance even a little bit, an inch will eventually become a mile and all integrity, purity and truth of art will be replaced by financial interests only," the icon said. "We can’t let that happen."

The "Mandy" star was, as he often is, right on the money with that one — and in light of this new survey about AI dreaming, that sort of warning feels more prescient than ever.

More on weird AI side effects: Something Bizarre Is Happening to People Who Use ChatGPT a Lot

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