‘I am utterly disgusted’: Legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki takes AI down a peg | Hacker News Reader

‘I am utterly disgusted’: Legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki takes AI down a peg

recode.net

50 pointsGaessaki31 comments

I think the article has mischaracterised Hayao's response to this. His main objection is that it's "creepy" and doesn't respect the pain and suffering of those with mobility disabilities.

While it's important that we respect and include those people, it's also true that had a human animator produced the same work, we should see the same response. The article's, or Hayao's response is flawed therefore in 2 ways:

1) That this is something that AI / animation technology has brought to us, truly, and

2) Just because it may not be well received by individuals with disabilities (by no means would this be rejected by all or maybe even most in that situation), that it is not effective animation (though I'm not judging its effectiveness either way, I'm just saying that this alone is a poor argument).

>While it's important that we respect and include those people, it's also true that had a human animator produced the same work, we should see the same response.

I don't think so. I think part of his point is that having humans do the animation means that the creators have empathy for the less fortunate and thus won't use them as cheap creepiness the way a neural network might if it was just solving for certain constraints.

Miyazaki's movies are often about the conflict between the human spirit and technology, and as far as high-tech goes he's not really a booster. High tech in his films is frequently cold and inhuman in creepy ways, and seeing a demo like this is probably confirmation of this theme.

I feel like this is the point that's being lost. It's not that it's AI, it could have been a paint brush, but whatever the tool there needs to be a connection between the artist and their works. The current state of AI largely erases that connection. That he mentions we're losing confidence in ourselves I feel backs this up, that we're engaged in the act of replacing ourselves from the design of the world with not enough thought in how we're negotiating our future selves.

The tech crowd are looking at this as an old artist who doesn't like future tools when I think it's meant to be deeper and more a critique on how we use our tools. An animator in touch with their disabled friend may come to tears in their work and create moments that connect with the audience on a deeper level because of it while AI will only pass over those moments in microseconds.

nailed it. spot on.

The people who are demoing this are so enamoured with their technology that they have lost touch with reality.

They casually mention the model does not feel pain and so uses its head as a leg. It's so smart! But they don't realize the end result is an insult to those who are struggling because of disability. All they see is cool technology.

I think the demo shows great promise, either for a grotesque human form in a zombie scenario or some animal or mechanical creature. Considering the type of stories mr. Miyazaki is know for the horror scenario was a poor choice. If the technology isn't ready for something better they shouldn't have presented it to him.

Firstly this is a genetic algorithm designed walk. If that is your criticism, it's easy to fix. Simply make the head feel pain, as an extra constraint. This algorithm is trying to find ways of moving the body it was given in a way that would work (like a human or any animal would. This algorithm is trying to be smart about moving around, it's NOT trying to imitate human animators. You want that, we have algorithms for that as well.

Second, is this really a valid criticism ? In a pinch, I have in fact used my head as an appendage to move around, to support things when moving furniture, and a million other ways so ... I don't see the problem. I have in fact moved furniture with a partially disabled person that used his head as an appendage to keep furniture stable just like I did. I always found that disabled people prefer that you just ignore their disabilities, as much as possible (unless it makes something truly impossible for them, but hard is just fine). Is that a wrong attitude ?

> While it's important that we respect and include those people, it's also true that had a human animator produced the same work, we should see the same response.

Not necessarily. I suppose he might be commenting on how depicting that particular movement in such a way might be a choice taken by a "human animator" to achieve an end goal or to evoke a certain (rational or emotional or a combination of the two) response from the viewer (hopefully in context of a greater goal/story). The default response here would be that the animation sequence in question is something that should serve as input or inspiration to the artist(s) creating the movie/video/artproduct/whatever and unlock some previously untappable source in their imagination.

The question that then arises is "What if the artist is also an AI" (whatever we currently mean when we say "AI"). Does that change anything?

But they made it for zombie games, and were specifically going for grotesque and creepy motions.

I don't see what this has to do with the disabled.

I think this is simply reflective off Miyazaki's view of what animations should be represented at all, and what entertainment in general reflect upon. He's not a fan of the grotesque, creepy, or disquieting.

If this is a group of his subordinates and they came to him with this.... they truly failed to capture the spirit of his animation style, and were way off target with their goals. Claiming it could be used for zombie's seems like a poor post-facto justification for their failure.

>I think this is simply reflective off Miyazaki's view of what animations should be represented at all

> He's not a fan of the grotesque, creepy, or disquieting.

Studio Ghibli has produced lots of work that's grotesque and disquieting. He's not against representing them.

Spirited Away and Grave of the Fireflies come to mind as films that show the grotesque in a way that there's a strong human spirit endowed in the animation.

He doesn't "take down AI" a peg. He is just being really rude to the group members who came up with a dull excuse for a mostly failed project.

Not that they did a bad job; the project just seems way to ambitious. Was someone really expecting to see a humanlike walking motion from such a project? I would expect big companies to have some troubles with such things.

What are you talking about? Evolutionary algos in walking animations have been used far and wide. These guys just took out the rules for using a upright stance.

And criticizing something like that, as unsubstantial as he did, is just fear of new tech. Those zombie movements are great.

Natural Motion has done learned animation for ten years and shipped in many AAA games.

Maybe he was really disgusted that the internal team couldn't reproduce that existing art? (Actually, I don't think that's it, but that might be what I would feel...)

It is feasible for a small group like that. There was a project done by three people, presented at SIGGRAPH Asia 2013, called "Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures". Their paper is not hard that hard to follow and it's really cool how it makes it possible to make any shape of biped figure out how to walk on its own. There's a video too: http://www.goatstream.com/research/papers/SA2013/index.html

If the english subtitles are accurate, to me it seemed he was disgusted by the movements of the character itself, and the motivation for creating them, rather than the specific AI means by which they were created.

I can't judge this without understanding the context. Was his company paying for this work? Was he invited for a presentation to a university?

Anyone who knows Miyazaki's films would have known he wouldn't like it. So if they made it FOR him they deserve the reprimanding they got. But if he was just dropping by for a casual demo it then his response was uncalled for.

Also the work was pretty bad. I wouldn't be surprised if they just made up the zombie excuse after they saw how horrible the result was.

Imagine if you came to Jean Luc Picard and said "Captain, we found a way to replace exploration with the holodeck! And the best part is, none of those boring nebulas or silly aliens -- we can generate endless grotesques unlike anything you've ever seen!" I believe you'd be asked to leave the ship.

Miyazaki is a humanist. Why would he be interested in simulated zombies?

A Humanist is someone adverse to zombies?

At the risk of oversimplifying:

Why would anyone expect Hayao Miyazaki to be interested in programatically generated walking algorithms for 3d zombies? That seems so far outside of the realm of anything that Miyazaki has worked on that expecting meaningful feedback from him seems rather foolish.

Next up they'll be asking Monica Lewinsky and Bono what they think of it.

Yeah, I was trying to figure out why they bothered showing him this, too.

If you get such a emotional reaction out of a animator legend, on a cliche as zombies- that is success.

Depends. If he was expecting something else, a negative emotional reaction is easy to produce.

Like if you were unveiling the iPhone prototype to Steve Jobs and you pull off the handkerchief and there's a turd lying there.

He found this specific instance of AI creepy and disgusting. Seems like a stretch (or clickbait) to interpret this as an attack on AI in general.

As someone who's seen almost all Ghibli movies, I can tell you that Miyazaki is not averse to the grotesque. Most who have seen Spirited Away probably remember it as a wonderful and positive film, but when it was showed at my younger sister's 10th birthday party, most of the children were terrified, based purely on the animated monsters.

There are creatures more disturbing in his movies than that zombie. The difference is the deep human empathy that goes into their creation.

IIRC, almost every frame in Ghibli movies is drawn by hand, so to see an AI created zombie that (in his view) mimics disabilities suffered by his friend in order to achieve a creepy effect, how could he not find it disgusting?

I think it's worth noting that mythology featuring creatures similar to those depicted in Spirited Away is hugely prevalent in Japanese culture. Children grow up with stories and images of youkai, so I imagine that when they watch Spirited Away, there is an element of familiarity and the feeling of disgust is lessened.

Zombies, on the other hand, aren't as integral a part of Japanese culture, and are mostly a western influence. Since we tend to fear and find disturbing things we aren't familiar with, I can imagine zombies actually being more disturbing to a Japanese person than youkai-like creatures.

Of course, I'm sure the fact the zombies reminded Miyazaki of his friend played a big part in his reaction, too.

They seem to have evoked a strong emotional response in him. Just not an emotional response he typically seeks to envoke in his works - but a lot of artists who do enjoy making creepy stuff would find it delightful.

It seems to me that there are several levels of misunderstanding here.

And the most interesting part is when Suzuki asks "So, what is your goal?", and the engineer answers "Well, we would like to build a machine that can draw pictures like humans do.".

This is certainly a commendable goal.

Then we cut to another sequence, where Miyazaki is drawing, and reflecting: "I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves..."

It may or may not be so, but this is an interesting point to discuss. I can certainly understand how it could feel like it, but you'd have to study the motive for wanting to "replace" humans by machines, or just have machine perform like humans.

One key misunderstanding in this exchange, and foremost on the part of the journalists reporting it (damn dumb journalists!), is that "This is a presentation of an artificial intelligence model which learned certain movements."

Obviously, they didn't teach it to move, they had a certain model of the body, and let the AI loose, trying to learn by itself how to move. This is a classical application of genetic programming. See how some of those creatures look "creepy" too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBgG_VSP7f8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgWQ-gPIvt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXTZHHQ7ZiQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yci5FuI1ovk

They obtained some creepy result, added a creepy texture and made it into a quick & dirty demo for "animating zombies".

Clearly, the people who assisted to this demo didn't understand what it was.

And the answer of the artist was the worst. Imagine assisting to Wright brothers' demo, and coming with: "I have a friend who is blind, this doesn't respect the pain and the suffering of those with vision disabilities who will never be able to pilot a plane." What a tool!

And the most interesting part is when Suzuki asks "So, what is your goal?", and the engineer answers "Well, we would like to build a machine that can draw pictures like humans do.".

This is certainly a commendable goal.

Why? It's not like there is some shortage of human artists. Indeed, the main problem for artists is the difficulty of making a living at it. As a painter I feel quite depressed when I see a friend on Facebook or somesuch upload an attractive new piece of artwork that turns out to be a new Snapchat filter.

>And the answer of the artist was the worst. Imagine assisting to Wright brothers' demo, and coming with: "I have a friend who is blind, this doesn't respect the pain and the suffering of those with vision disabilities who will never be able to pilot a plane." What a tool!

This isn't what he was saying at all. He has a friend, with something perhaps like Parkinson's. The zombie animation was clearly evocative of his friend's difficult movements. So to him, it's morally repulsive to create disturbing animation that isn't even drawn by a human that so closely resembles physical disabilities.

Whether or not it makes for good horror or art is another matter. He just finds the whole concept disgusting.

old man yells at cloud

Looks like they succeeded at making an accurate zombie. The problem is with Hayao Miyazaki ethos that ties together artists and their creations. Certainly we would have no villains if this were taken at face value?

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