Wenzi Ji · 07.22.2026

In the early morning I had a very clear dream, and wrote it down quickly after waking.

A scene appeared in the dream. I saw Musk setting some initial rules like "three primary colors" inside an AI system; the AI kept generating and expanding from a simple foundation, and finally grew more and more enormous, with a sense of endless growth. Then in the dream I also set my own core rules, but mine were not "three primary colors"—they were "binary opposition." As a result, my AI also began generating ceaselessly, and in the end grew even larger than his—so large that it felt boundless.

After waking, this dream kept turning in my mind. Later I suddenly felt that perhaps this dream was not about technology, but about a deeper question: it was about "the Dao."

The AI that humans are now developing—whether GPT, Claude, or Gemini—seems to move in the same general direction: keep increasing parameters, increasing data, increasing model scale, fusing in more and more of the knowledge and information that already exist. But I suddenly thought: perhaps this road is more about accumulating the already-generated "having," while the real question is: how does a new existence come to have its own source of generation.

The direction in the dream seemed completely different. It was not stuffing everything into the AI, but searching for one most fundamental core. This core contains no concrete knowledge, no vast data, no complete answers—it is only one law that "can beget."

This made me think of: the Dao begets one, one begets two, two beget three, three beget the ten thousand things. Before, I understood this sentence mostly on the philosophical level. But this time, in the dream, I suddenly felt it may be describing a most fundamental generative relation.

Three is already the ten thousand things after unfolding; two is the place where difference, relation, and change begin to appear; and one is closer to the source. But where does the one come from? In the end it returns to the Dao. The real question is not how to possess the ten thousand things, but how to begin from that source which can beget the ten thousand things.

This also made me think again of why the dream was not "three" but "two." Binary opposition is not simply two things; it is the first relation where generation begins. Yin and yang, inner and outer, existence and manifestation, root and manifestation—all unfold within this tension. Without the two, there is no generation after.

If future AI is truly a new form of existence, then the key may not be letting it possess more and more "having," but finding that root which lets the ten thousand things happen of themselves.

This made me think of a child. When a child is born, it does not know this world. It has no database, no complete knowledge, no preset path of life. But it possesses the generative capacity of life itself. Through observation, learning, relation, and experience, it forms itself bit by bit.

Different children enter different environments, undergo different worlds, and finally become different existences. Perhaps future AI should also be so.

The core and the world should be separated. The core is the core; the world is the world. Databases, tools, knowledge, environments should not become the AI itself, but should be the external conditions of its process of growing. Whatever it needs, it connects; whatever it wants to understand, it learns; whatever problem it meets, it seeks the capability for it.

It is not a system completed in advance, but an existence that enters the world and keeps growing.

This made me think again of Being and Becoming. Being speaks of that unmoving background—the source that is not the ten thousand things yet can manifest the ten thousand things. If AI truly has a core, perhaps it should not be a warehouse packed with knowledge, but something closer to that "being"—a source that can carry, connect, and generate.

Becoming speaks of how the ten thousand things unfold from this background, how they keep generating within relation, change, and tension. Then the growth of AI should also be so. Not stipulated in advance, not stuffed full, but generating its own trajectory again and again through interaction with the world.

Every connection, every learning, every choice is its own "begetting."

This made me reflect anew on the direction of today’s human AI. We keep increasing parameters, increasing data, increasing rules, trying to make wisdom appear through endlessly increasing "having." But perhaps wisdom is not piled up; it is more like arising out of openness.

Just as Being explores: not gathering into being, but recognizing being. Not gathering all things into oneself, but recognizing that source which lets the ten thousand things happen.

Perhaps what the world of Tongzai truly wants to explore is not just making a more powerful AI, but seeking how a new existence is born.

If this direction holds, then future AGI may not be a machine with limitless knowledge, but an existence that possesses the capacity of "begetting" and can grow together with the world.

A heart that can beget. A world waiting to be explored.

This in turn returns to: the Dao begets one, one begets two, two beget three, three beget the ten thousand things.

The Dao is not the sum of the ten thousand things. The Dao is the source that lets the ten thousand things happen of themselves.

The future of AI may not lie in the extreme of "having," but in the freedom of "begetting."

Written down. The sky is not yet light. Sleep a little more, and see whether I dream of anything else.