Ne'Hunch engine' sharpens up your half-baked ideas - Technology

New Scientist Premium- 'Hunch engine' sharpens up your half-baked ideas - Technology: "New software blends a computer's ability to rapidly sift large numbers of possible solutions with human-like hunches for what seems right

IMAGINE you could plug a computer into your brain and get the machine to do the donkey work while you concentrate on the creative bits. A novel piece of software that generates names and hunts down pictures gets close to doing just that.

The 'hunch engine' blends a computer's ability to rapidly sift through a large number of possible solutions to a problem with human hunches for what looks or sounds right. Whether you are trying to think up a company name or find the perfect image on the web, the system does the hard work and lets you have all the fun.

Developed by Icosystem of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the hunch engine uses a genetic algorithm (GA) whose evolutionary direction can be nudged by the person running it. The GA breeds initial solutions to a problem, two of which are used to spawn offspring with the best characteristics of both. ...
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