I started to collaborate with Autodesk, one of the earliest generative design software companies. They allocated me a dedicated computer, and I asked it a simple question: “Can you help me rest my body, using minimum matter and energy?”
The AI had to understand what a human body was — and it knew nothing about my culture, my origin, my desires or my gender. The machine struggled for more than two years, going back and forth with me and Autodesk’s engineers on the designs. It was stuck.
The solution came to me, in a roundabout way, when my great friend Henri Seydoux — the CEO of French drone firm Parrot — explained to me that the fingers of a fetus’ hand in its mother’s womb are not formed by adding matter but by removing it. (The hand is initially a paddle-like shape, and the fingers are only revealed when cells in the areas between the digits die off). I told the machine about this via the engineers, to help reorientate the AI’s thinking, and within minutes, it produced a chair.
In those days, it took three years for the machine to come up with a chair. Today, it would probably take a few seconds.
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