Teen Programmer Uses Neural Networks to Push Boundaries of Creative AI
Eighteen-year-old Robbie Barrat works at Stanford's biomedical informatics lab and uses neural networks to generate art, building on his earlier success teaching an AI to rap like Kanye West.
Robbie Barrat works at Stanford's Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, where he spends his spare time training neural networks to create art. The eighteen-year-old self-taught programmer gains significant attention for his creative AI projects, including recently having his computer-generated art featured on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek.
Barrat grows up in West Virginia where no formal artificial intelligence classes exist, so he teaches himself to code entirely on his own. His unique skills lead to an internship at NVIDIA after he publishes a project where he successfully trains a neural network to write rap lyrics in the style of Kanye West.
The young programmer views art as an ideal medium for exploring whether computers possess the ability to be truly creative. He ultimately aims to tackle the fundamental theories behind getting AI to devise creative solutions to complex problems, using his current artistic endeavors as a stepping stone toward that larger goal.