Anlife: What does an unusual evolution simulator say about AI?

A A strange piece of software recently landed on the PC gaming store Steam. And “software” seems to be the cleanest way to describe it. Anlife: Motion-learning Life Evolution exists somewhere between a full-blown life simulation, a science project, and some kind of haunted aquarium, and but for some unusual factor, it probably would have disappeared without making much of an impact. A few years ago, some of its creators were literally roasted on camera by one of the true legends of Japanese animation.

Back in 2016, Hayao Miyazaki, director of films like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, was shown new technology that uses AI to animate models. Faced with a zombie that used its head to move by smashing its skull into the ground and moving its body back and forth like a fish, Miyazaki declared what he had seen was “an insult to life itself.” It’s hard not to watch the clip without feeling slightly burned – but now, a decade later, the ashen-faced developers of…