It’s about time someone developed an anime series about deep learning. In the last several years, I’ve paid close attention to deep learning. And while I’m far from an expert on anime, I’ve watched a nonzero number of anime cartoons. And yet through neither route did I encounter even one single anime about deep learning.
There were some close calls. Ghost in the Shell gives a vague pretense of addressing AI. But the character might as well be a body-jumping alien. Nothing in this story speaks to the reality of machine learning research.
In Knights of Sidonia, if you can muster the superhuman endurance required to follow the series past its only interesting season, you’ll eventually find out that the flying space-ship made out of remnants of Earth on which Tanikaze and friends photosynthesize, while taking breaks from fighting space monsters, while wearing space-faring versions of mecha suits … [breath] contains an artificially intelligent brain-emulating parasitic nematode. But no serious consideration of ML appears.
If you were looking to anime for a critical discourse on artificial intelligence, until recently you’d be disappointed.
Continue reading “Death Note: Finally, an Anime about Deep Learning”