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I was inspired to build a fractal explorer with AI that also reacts to music (of course), after reading Deep Simplicity by John Gribbin.

This book is an excellent primer on chaos theory and how complex systems can emerge from simple mathematical formulas, including how life itself can emerge from primordial soup!

Fractals are a great example of the kind of structures that are found everywhere in the universe, including possibly the most famous visual representation, the Mandelbrot fractal.

Even though this book was written before AI, it explains exactly the way AI will achieve Recursive Self-Improvement in the near future as a series of logical steps already set in motion.

As a professional designer, I’m much less interested in what generative AI does to replace human talents (what the internet lovingly refers to as AI slop). I’m much more interested in the intersection between mathematics and design, something AI coding tools are uniquely poised to help us with.

How can we generate design concepts at the atomic level using mathematics? This book and a few weekends of messing around with AI code will get us to some amazing new heights here.

The future is about how talented people can think with these tools and have fun with them, not about how these tools can replace what makes us human.

Keep exploring, y’all!