Expressing ideas and thoughts — whether by some hurried doodle on a post-it or with a finely crafted sentence in a leather-bound journal — is incredibly important.

A random image from 2017 — a hand-painted letterform, the initial M, picked out in red against a coffee-stained, washed-out board.

A seascape painted on a scrap of wood — little white-sailed ships dotted across a dark sea, under a deep red sky with a headland in the distance. Found the wood, found some paint, and just went for it.

A handmade replica of the bath token from Spirited Away, carved from wood and finished with paint and gold leaf. Made as a gift for a friend.

Life can often feel like a journey towards a specific goal, be it happiness, wealth, expertise, or fame. And just like in artificial intelligence, achieving our goals can be seen as an optimization problem. But what if we thought of life itself as an AI search problem? What lessons could we learn from the various search approaches used by computer scientists and mathematicians?