Generative 3D printing

Some folks are wondering why all of a sudden their LinkedIn feed is inundated with my posts and in particular a picture of a much younger-looking Bonabeau eating a 3D-printed appetizer in a weird T-shirt. Both the T-shirt and the mise-en-bouche are related to hashtag#genai: the back of the T-shirt shows a set of design patterns from Icosystem's 2001-2008 genAI, which is based not on hashtag#GPTs or other hashtag#deeplearningai but on evolutionary algorithms. When combined with human feedback, we called it Hunch Engine, a form of Interactive Evolutionary Computation. Generating variants of a design pattern on a computer using an alphabet of design elements requires... a computer and human feedback requires a human looking at a screen ("is this what I want to generate?"). Generating variants of food items for human feedback requires not just an algorithm to specify the exact recipe but also a system for producing the recipe, hence the food printer (with a fab@home printer generously loaned to us by Hod Lipson). Given the speed at which these food items are generated physically, this 2008 set of variants took a whole day to print and served as a proof-of-concept for "physical generative AI".

As for why I am suddenly writing on LinkedIn, well, I have been thinking about and working on various forms of generative AI for 30 years and I felt that it was time to say something about it, even if in a roundabout way. In digging into my archives, I am also finding unrelated little nuggets that I feel compelled to share. Some may feel narcissistic ego trips (the main function of social media?) but hopefully with enough self-deprecation to make them palatable.

Love you all!