AI art thinks about biocybernetic AI - C&EN Bonus Content

I recently published an article for C&EN's Newscripts column titled: A tiny brain good only at video games, for now, and an elephant-trunk gripper arm. That article, available at the link, is about two research projects. In the first, an Australian team grew neuron clusters on computer I/O chips, and then taught those vivo-silico systems how to play Pong. In the second, unrelated project, a group in South Korea made a new gripping appendage for robot arms that combines suction and a pinch-grip. 

It was a hoot to report, write, and especially illustrate. The Korean team supplied me with a wealth of great images and a hypnotizing video showing the gripper in action; C&EN's video team clipped the video down to a social-media-friendly 2-ish minutes. 

For the Pong brain, I wanted to make the illustration using an image-generating AI. I have a subscription to Midjourney, so off I went on a long fun trek to make something that visually captured the story. There's a gatekeeping aspect I don't like to what I'm about to say, but I feel like AI illustration is a better term than AI art for all of these platforms, but that's a discussion for a different blog. 

When you're making AI illustrations, you usually need to iterate several-to-many times before you land on what you want. In this case, I was also picking the illustration with my editor, who preferred some of the less gross-looking images that Midjourney cranked out. But I am famously loathe to let good visual content go un-offered—that's how C&EN's Chemistry in Pictures came into being—so here is a slideshow containing most of the runners-up that we didn't end up using in the article.