Forest for the trees

When I was in college, I happened to hear about a small film festival hosted at the Smithsonian by the National Museum of Asian Art, where they would be showing animated films. Anime!

Up to this point, I hadn't been exposed to it very much, so I was curious. And hey, free movies for a college kid? Heck yeah.

From what I remember, the festival was only showing a small selection of movies, culminating with a dubbed version of something called Princess Mononoke, which would soon be released theatrically across the US.

By the end of the screening, I was floored.

I went to see it when it released in theaters, and eventually bought the DVD. I must have rewatched the film dozens of times. Or more.

It's been a while since I last watched it, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

No AI

I was recently reminded that Studio Ghibli has, in the past, released images from some of their work, and I wanted to find some nice stills from Princess Mononoke.

So I went on noai.duckduckgo.com and typed in "ghibli art" to see if I could find it. This was one of the first results.

Ugh. Free Magical Ghibli Image Generator.

Disheartening. Especially since I had been sitting on this topic for some time and putting off writing about it because reasons.

So, here goes.

Ghibli Style

Earlier this year in March, Sam Altman commented on how some of his followers made him "into a twink ghibli style".

A couple of weeks ago, the Japanese trade group CODA, whose members include Studio Ghibli, wrote a letter to OpenAI demanding that they stop using their content to train the video generating platform Sora 2.

On one side, the CEO of OpenAI being glib and irreverent, and on the other, a formal request to respect the demand of copyright holders.

I'm not here to contend on the virtues or vices of using existing properties in order to create something new, and how that either exonerates or condemns the usage of these properties by data-hungry tech companies.

But you have to admit, even if everything is a remix, and part of creativity is re-envisioning what has come before...

It is still grossly vulgar to have a generated Hayao Miyazaki lookalike promoting your website's offerings.

But I digress...

I would hope that I could live in a world where I could post on my own blog, my own words, my own thoughts—and also tell any tech company that wants to use this to train future models to kindly fuck right off.

Unfortunately, I don't think I live in that world.

Eyes Unclouded

Another impetus for writing this post was a series of posts by Glyph over on Mastodon.

What caught my eye was this quote further down the chain:

I have friends I respect tremendously caught up to varying degrees with the AI bubble; it's impossible not to be. While I certainly have active social links to other skeptics, I would REALLY like to believe that my other friends are doing good, meaningful work, ethically.

We're in a tough time, regardless of where we stand with our opinions.

It reminded me of the warring factions in Princess Mononke.

On one hand, you have humans who are destroying the forest in order to build Irontown, a haven for those typically rejected. Lady Eboshi is brash and harsh and knows what she wants, but she protects these people to the best of her ability.

On the other end, the animals and gods of the forest, as well as the titular San (Princess Mononoke) are at odds with the humans.

But, we eventually learn, their war isn't really the problem.

The fatal poison is the hate they feel towards each other.

I'd like to believe that I'm on the right side of things. That I'm able to "see with eyes unclouded by hate."

This is a line that Prince Ashitaka utters as he steps in to stop the murder of Lady Eboshi. What are you here for, someone asks, confused about his intentions.

To see with eyes unclouded by hate.

Villains

What is truly remarkable about the film is its refusal to create villains. Different characters have different motivations, and all actions have a different set of consequences.

Unfortunately, I do believe that we are currently living in an age of villains, and they are propelled by unfettered wealth, power, and resources.

They are polluted by their own hallucinations of what the future looks like. I think they have already been infected by hate.

Let's look at that tweet by Sam Altman again...

>be me 
>grind for a decade trying to help make 
superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever 
>mostly no one cares for first 7.5 years, 
then for 2.5 years everyone hates you for 
everything 
>wake up one day to hundreds of messages: 
"look i made you into a twink ghibli style haha"

Cure cancer or whatever.

Most of us on this side of the billionaire spectrum (and there are many more of us than them) know or should know that "superintelligence" and "curing cancer or whatever" (through LLM neural networks) is science fiction.

I'm not saying this to diminish the amazing science behind large language models and their predictive abilities when paired with massive compute and access to massive amounts of data.

But I'm not sure if billionaires and VC people believe it either. I think they believe in one thing—money.

These people hate humanity. They hate what makes us humans.

They want a future that reaps the benefits of everything humankind has built together—without the consent or participation of those very same humans.

Collapse

After Lady Eboshi kills and beheads the Forest Spirit, chaos unfolds in a devastating manner.

It's as if a bubble has popped, and everyone feels the effects. Everyone is in danger.

San and Ashitaka do their best to return the head to the forest spirit, and miraculously, they are able to prevent a catastrophe.

Irontown is mostly destroyed, as well as the surrounding forest.

San decides to return to the forest with the animals, where they will plant trees and hope to replenish it. Ashitaka decides instead to help rebuild a better Irontown, helping the remaining residents to have a home to return to.

Hope

As a young adult watching Princess Mononoke for the first time, I wasn't quite sure what it all meant. I had to watch it a few times before I totally grasped the plot.

But I still struggle with some of the implications.

I know that if we, on this side of the billionaires, continue quibbling and dividing ourselves into factions, we're losing the plot.

Those things that divide us, they are very real. They are very important.

In Irontown, there is real hope that the technology we wield is helping us advance in ways that maybe weren't possible before. It is providing us with work and resources to care for those that are around us.

But it is coming at the expense of the forest, where real harm is being done. Where individuals are being exploited, deceived, and mocked.

Yet, without finding a way toward cooperation and understanding, we'll likely be too distracted fighting each other while the hubris of billionaires infects everything it touches.

Maybe I'm cynical. I hope so. I hope there's a better way forward that doesn't rely on a near catastrophic event.

But also, I don't want to miss the forest for the trees.