Knit two, purl one, knit one, knit one.

How's that going for you?

In this round, move the marker every fourth round, marking the index finger knuckle.

And I don't know what that means.

A few weeks ago, I met with my colleague, Julia.

She helps with research for this project, but on that day, we weren't sharing notes or fact-checking.

We were looking at a series of knitting patterns that had been written by a computer, more specifically a neural network.

That network had been fed several hat patterns as examples, and then, all on its own, it came up with new hat patterns.

But the results were not quite what we expected.

Today's episode is all about artificial intelligence, AI.

What it is, what it isn't, what it can and can't do.

What happens when you try to teach a computer how to knit?

Can a neural network match the creativity of a human?

And what might happen if the Terminator became a knitware designer?

You're close. Give them to me. Now.

This is Fibernation, tales of textiles, craft, and culture.

I'm your host, Alison Kourleski.

Crunch.

Before we get to the part about knitting robots, I need to explain what AI actually is, and that

might take a little while.

If you say the words artificial intelligence, the image that comes to mind is a super smart computer doing incredibly complex things, like predicting crime before it happens or overthrowing the human race.

Ask an expert, though, and you find out that image is not the reality, mostly.

...