Eric Bonabeau, of Icosystem, says that there’s much in life we recognize without being able to explain why. He says we’re great at detecting patterns but terrible at exploring alternatives. Let computers search and the humans do the evaluation. The computer then generates new alternatives reflecting the humans’ choices. He gives examples from car companies creating new designs, pharmaceuticals generating new drugs, etc. He also shows live demos of interaction with flickr and then Amazon: Select the closest results from a search and it generates returns that are closer and closer to what you want. E.g., if you select the Eiffel Tower photos that get returned from a search for Paris, it starts showing you more photos with the Tower. (It’s working on tags, not on the images.)

He ends with the question: Can this become a consumer application? Is it a new way of browsing?

In the last two minutes, Erix described a project Icosystem is working on for NASA. It combines multiple ingredient inputs with various preparation capabilities as a way of cooking recipes on spacecraft. The new possibilities are astronomical, in the 10¹⁵ range. (It’s the cover story of New Scientist.) [Technorati tags: foo05 EricBonabeau icosystem search]

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