For our last movie night we watched Princess Mononoke. I remembered loving that movie when I was younger, but watching it as an adult made me once again realize how Miyazaki has a way of expressing diverging sides without picking one. The film shows people, animals and spirits with legitimate and largely incompatible needs, and each faction is further engaged in infighting. A central arc of the story is Lady Eboshi’s Irontown, which gives people who were largely rejected by society work, protection and dignity. She gives shelter and work to those who have leprosy and to former sex workers. The mine and the weapon factory provide them with a livelihood, but they also destroy the forest around them. The forest’s inhabitants, in particular the boars, response choose war against the humans to defend themselves. Eboshi is not portrayed as a villain. She does real good for the people of Irontown, but also is an arms manufacturer who is destroying the forest around it. The film anchors around a character called Ashitaka, who has been condemned to death by an unfortunate encounter with a god that was turned into a demon after being fatally wounded by one of Eboshi’s guns. He doesn’t take sides, but he wants to understand and find the truth. Another character is San (whom they call Mononoke), a girl who was raised by wolves and, despite being human, considers herself part of the forest. This movie’s backdrop is human progress, and it reminded me so much of the challenges we are facing today with AI. AI is useful, empowering and consequential beyond the people who benefit from it. It’s similar to the iron in the story. Irontown gives the outcast purpose and power. There are people today who see themselves in an environment just like that: people who were never let in before and who can now build things that were out of reach. They are wielding AI to their benefit. But there are negative externalities. In Mononoke it’s not just the spirits and animals in the forest who bear the consequences, it’s also other people. Irontown produces guns, and its people are engaged in fights with other humans. There is conflict and power seeking everywhere. Another, unseen character is the power-hungry emperor, who wants the head of the forest spirit, a god, because he believes it will make him immortal. Eboshi is willing to support that cause, not because she thinks it’s right, but because she is at war with the forest’s gods who are preventing her expansion, so they have a common interest. But there really is no need for anyone to kill the forest spirit, in the same way there is no need for any one country to “win at AI”. What drives it is the fear of what happens if someone else wins first. And the emperor is willing to have a god killed for it. The people who help him with that desire, Eboshi included, don’t understand the chaos it will unleash. There it also shows the dangers of seeking overwhelming power without comprehension of how to control its consequences. The pursuit of power itself becomes destructive. In the end, the gods die, and what grows back is not the old forest anymore. Irontown is destroyed. Eboshi wants to rebuild it, and to build a better town this time. Ashitaka stays with the people of Irontown after his curse is lifted by the dying forest spirit. San cannot forgive the humans and stays with the wolves. In the end, nothing is truly resolved, but there is a truce that came at great cost. Ashitaka’s role in the movie is one of a neutral actor. He was wronged both by a spirit turned demon in the forest, who put a curse on him, and, indirectly, by Eboshi, who caused the spirit to turn evil. Yet he harbors no ill will towards either side. He sets out to “see with eyes unclouded by hate,” and in the course of the movie he is seen as an unaligned actor. He helps people on both sides, and stands in their way to prevent further conflict. He doesn’t feel like a pacifist, but he’s the closest to one there is. He’s a truth seeker in a changing world. Because he engages he’s seen as suspicious by both sides, and ends up shot by the people of Irontown when he tries to rescue San. I use AI every day and find it genuinely empowering. But I also recognize the pain it causes some, and the moral problems it poses. It’s genuine progress for humanity, but it comes at significant cost. And many of those costs will be carried by people who aren’t going to benefit from it. So it’s no surprise that AI feels like a threat to many today. Communities currently strongly align themselves with one side and fight against the other. The forst spirit did not have to die and the boars did not have to die in a senseless war. The question is not whether there will be iron, but what kind of Irontown we build with it. I want our conversation about AI to make room for nuance and genuine understanding, for us to look at it and each other with eyes unclouded by hate. We should take advantage of its real benefits, but also recognize the damage it can do, and the choices we still have about what we build and what we’re willing to sacrifice for it. I like to think there is a path for people with differing opinions can find a way to live alongside before losing something we can’t get back.

Towards greater financialisation of the token economy

Really excited to share some work we did with Xint.io. We don’t always get to publicly share what we do. We have permission to share this one, and it is some public good. Xint.io provides a code vulnerability scan service that helps flag Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) in a […]

The Generative AI bubble may finally have popped.

If you are helping build something that might kill everyone, maybe stop doing that.