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17-25 October 2026

Optimal Intelligence

Understand how AI relates to people and why the technology develops the way it does, by turning the dials of a top-tier model yourself.

Hosted by The Social Path

This project is now archived and was part of DDW26

The AI-lab
The AI-lab
Jelte Burggraaf
Optimal Intelligence, by CMD Breda graduate Jelte Burggraaf, is an installation of tubes that together form an AI lab. In pairs you turn the dials until an 'optimal' chatbot emerges, discovering what AI really is and what drives AI labs.

Big questions that matter

My graduation project The Social Path explores the socia path we take now that new technologies are changing how we relate to one another. It centres on AI, but just as much on how humans themselves work, because that is where you can see what makes this the 'most human' technology ever created.

The experience

With the final design, Optimal Intelligence, you step into the shoes of the makers of intelligence: you turn the dials and reflect on what drives the innovation of this technology.

What you discover

From the makers' perspective you see what the technology really is and what it is not, and perhaps even why they are so eager to win the AI race.

About The Social Path

The Social Path is my (Jelte Burggraaf) initiative to learn what AI means for people, as it will be the most embedded, human-like technology we have ever seen. Through this initiative I research AI and how people use it, but more importantly I translate those findings into a format that enables anyone to open a dialogue about the topic.

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