I’m an enormous fan of people that spend their time prodding AI into doing bizarre, fascinating, and probably even helpful issues. Seeds is an annual zine speaking about simply that, both in principle or observe. It’s a companion to Procjam, a low-pressure, week-long occasion the place individuals “make something that makes something”. Many of the submissions relate to what individuals bought as much as at Procjam, however Seeds is wider-ranging than that. This year’s crop contains additional explorations of procedural dinosaurs, producing landscapes utilizing crumpled up paper, and an AI artwork competitors.
Let’s do the dinos first. I discussed Elle Sullivan’s work when in my last post about Seeds, again when she was making quick n’ dirty pixel Tinysaurs. This 12 months she’s written about writing a extra versatile instrument that non-programmers may be capable to work with:
“This language, called Anatomy, lets me concisely define bones and how they can change in relation to one another, letting me define a dinosaur skeleton that’s capable of morphing into any dinosaur. But, it let me do it in a way that’s readable even to non-programmers, and, when I’m done, I won’t just have a dinosaur generator, but also a tool that could even be used by non-programmers to make similar generators, like a primate generator, or a fish generator. It could even turn into a general animal or creature generator. People might in theory find ways to use it to make things outside of creatures that I never envisioned.”
She goes on to speak a few hypothetical “valid egg description language program”, which I’ll go away to talk for itself.
The AI artwork competitors report got here from a number of school members at Innopolis University, who tasked their college students with tasking an evolutionary algorithm to design a portrait. The profitable entry was a terrifying baboon.
I additionally appreciated Neil Bickford’s entry, the place he defined how he generates landscapes utilizing crumpled up paper. I’m no programmer, however this looks as if a neat trick that might be helpful for any variety of tasks.
These are simply my picks from two dozen entries, so I’d advocate a minimum of trying out the contents page to see if something catches your eye. I haven’t even talked about the staff making an attempt to show AIs how you can flirt.
Seeds is edited yearly by Jupiter Hadley and Dann Sullivan. Long could all this proceed.
Disclosure: Jupiter Hadley used to jot down about free games for us, although we’ve by no means met or ’nuffin.
