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.<p>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:<p>1) That this is something that AI / animation technology has brought to us, truly, and<p>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).
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.<p>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.
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?<p>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.<p>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.<p>Miyazaki is a humanist. Why would he be interested in simulated zombies?
At the risk of oversimplifying:<p>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.
He found this <i>specific instance</i> 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.<p>There are creatures more disturbing in his movies than that zombie. The difference is the deep human empathy that goes into their creation.<p>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?
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.<p>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.".<p>This is certainly a commendable goal.<p>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..."<p>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.<p>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."<p>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:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBgG_VSP7f8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBgG_VSP7f8</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgWQ-gPIvt4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgWQ-gPIvt4</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXTZHHQ7ZiQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXTZHHQ7ZiQ</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yci5FuI1ovk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yci5FuI1ovk</a><p>They obtained some creepy result, added a creepy texture and made it into a quick & dirty demo for "animating zombies".<p>Clearly, the people who assisted to this demo didn't understand what it was.<p>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!
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?