AI-Billgren talk

with Christian Landgren

februari 6th 2020

Hi Christian, what is it that Iteam does exactly?

Iteam is a software company that helps our customers to adapt or transform their business to the sustainable tech age through small autonomus teams. iteam.se>

What is the Billgren AI prototype?

My and colleague Alexander Czigler wanted to experiment with AI in a Swedish context to show what can be achieved with very limited resources and existing open Machine Learning models available. The result is a collaborative art installation where you as a user can co-create an artwork together with the AI. The AI-Billgren has already learned the style and motives from the famous Swedish artist Ernst Billgren. The first result is often crappy but if you play a while you will start to understand the way the AI thinks and by drawing a few lines, watch the AI fill in the blanks, then continue to draw you will both see a unique artwork form in front of your eyes. This is by the way the way AI will be used in the coming years – crappy but when you understand its limitations – new unexpected and wonderful things happen.

Watch Ernst Billgren himself giving the prototype a try at the Iteam office in ”Äkta Billgrens” episode 5>

How did you come up with the idea making something so tangible as painting into AI technology?

An AI-painting was sold at Sotheby’s 2018 for close to 800 000 SEK – we wanted to see if we could do this ourselves ; )

What’s your favorite place at A house?

My favorite place is Iteam’s office. We won the award for best office 2019 – please come by for a coffee. Don’t be a stranger!

Everyone talks Artificial Intelligence, what’s the next big step that will change our lives to the better?

Transport will probably be the next thing to be revolutionized. Not only by autonomous drones and self driving cars but in optimization. We are working very actively in this field in a project called Predictive Movement that aims to change the way we transport by optimizing transportation on a systems level and we start with the rural areas in Sweden (that has enormous values to gain both in terms of energy/CO2 but also for making rural areas more attractive).

Read more here: predictivemovement.se>

Read more