Chapter 97 16.6 Mickey Mouse Reloaded

In the winter of 2001, in one corner of the Disney set, a trailer was set up as a top-secret laboratory.Rolls of old Disney animation tapes, piles of large-capacity computer hard drives, and three 24-year-old computer graphics artists hiding among them.It took them about three months to deconstruct Mickey Mouse.The guy who only appeared in 2D cartoons was reimagined as a being with 3D potential.He knows how to walk, jump and dance, how to express surprise, how to wave goodbye.He still can't speak but can lip sync.The brand-new Mickey Mouse is now installed in a 2G mobile hard disk. The hard drive was carried through the old animation studio, past rows of empty, dusty animation racks, and finally to a cubicle housing Silicon Valley graphics workstations.Mickey couldn't wait to jump into the computer.Animators have long created an artificial world with everything for the mouse.He is brought onto the set and the cameras are activated.power on!Mitch stumbles on the stairs of his house and gravity pulls him down.His bouncy butt slams down the plank stairs, creating a realistic bounce effect.A virtual gust of wind blows through the open front door and blows his hat away.And when he's about to run after his hat, the rug slips away from under him and curls up following the physics of the fabric, just as Mickey falls under its simulated weight.During the whole process, Mickey only received one instruction, which is to enter the room and must chase his hat.Everything else happens naturally.

After 1997, no one draws Mickey Mouse by hand.There is no need to do this anymore.Oh, and sometimes animators still step in and touch up a key facial expression here or there—the producers call these animators makeup artists.Basically, Mitch gets a script and he does it.And, he—or his alter ego—is now on the set of multiple films simultaneously throughout the year without a break.Of course, he never complained. Graphics whiz wasn't satisfied.They included a mace learning module in Mickey's code.With this, Mickey has grown into a qualified actor.He reacts to the emotions and actions of other big-name actors in the same act, such as Donald Duck and Goofy.Whenever a scene is reshot, he will remember the last performance and strengthen it next time.He also uses external forces to evolve.The programmer tweaked his code, improving the fluidity of his movements, enriching his expressions, and adding depth to his emotions.He can now play an "emotional guy."

Not only that, after five years of study, Mickey has now begun to have his own mind.He was somehow hostile to Donald Duck; and if someone hit him on the head with a mallet, he would throw a fit of rage.Once angry, he can become very stubborn.After years of study, he has learned to avoid various obstacles and cliff edges. If the director asks him to walk on the edge of the cliff, he will hesitate.Mickey's programmers complained that in order to program a program to avoid these idiosyncrasies, it would have to destroy other qualities and skills that Mickey already had. "It's like an ecological environment," they say, "if you try to remove one thing, you must disturb the entire environment." A graphics expert said it best on this point: "In fact, it is the same as Same in psychology. The rat now has a real personality. You can't take the personality apart, you can only build on it."

By 2007, Mickey Mouse was a pretty good actor.He's hot among agents.He can talk.He can deftly handle any kind of slapstick situation you can imagine.He does have a unique skill of his own.He has a great sense of humor and an unbelievable sense of timing that a comedian has.The only problem is, if you work with him, you'll find him an asshole.He would suddenly go into a fit and then go into a rage.The directors hated him.But they had to put up with him—they'd seen worse—after all, he was Mickey Mouse. And best of all, he never dies and never gets old. Disney foreshadowed this emancipation of animated characters in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.The animated characters in this movie have their own independent lives and dreams, but they can only stay in the virtual world that belongs to them, Animation City, and they can only come out to perform in the movie when needed.Depending on the setting, these animated characters can be cooperative, cheerful, or not.They possess the capriciousness and bad temper of human actors.Roger Rabbit is a fictional character, but one day Disney will have to deal with an autonomous, out-of-control Roger Rabbit.

The problem is control.Mickey was in full control of Walt Disney in his first movie, Steamboat Willie.Disney and Mickey Mouse are two in one.As more and more realistic behaviors are implanted in Mickey, the relationship between him and his creator becomes more and more estranged and out of control.This is nothing new for anyone with children or pets.But for those who have cartoon characters or machines that can become intelligent, it is very new.Of course, neither small children nor pets are completely out of control.Their obedience reflects our direct authority, and their education and shaping reflect our greater degree of indirect control.

The best way to describe this situation is: control is a category: at one end is total domination of the "one" type, and at the other end is "out of control"; between these two ends are various types of control, we have not yet properly words corresponding to it. Until recently, all of our artifacts, all of our handicrafts were still under our authority.However, since we have cultivated artificial life at the same time as artificial products, this also indicates that we will lose the privilege of prohibiting orders.To be honest, the so-called "out of control" is an exaggerated description of the future.The machines we animate are still indirectly influenced and directed by us, but out of our control.

As much as I've looked around, I still can't find a word to describe this type of effect.We really don't have a proper name for this loose relationship between an influential creator and a creature with a mind of its own.We'll see more of these creations in the future.It stands to reason that there should be such a word in the category of the relationship between parents and children, but unfortunately there is not.We have the word "herding" to describe our relationship with the flock: when we herd a flock of sheep, we know we don't have total authority, but we're not completely free either.Perhaps, we will "herd" artificial life.

We also "cultivate" plants, helping them achieve their own goals, or slightly influencing them for our own use. The word "management" perhaps comes closest in meaning to the control we can exert over artificial life, such as that virtual Mickey Mouse.A woman can "manage" her disobedient child, or a barking dog, or she can manage her three hundred highly capable salespeople.Disney could also manage Mickey Mouse in the movies. The word "management" is close, but not perfect.We manage a wild environment like the Everglades, but we actually have very little say over the algae, snakes, wetland weeds, etc.; we manage a national economy, but it does what it wants; Although we manage the telephone network, we do not monitor how a particular call is completed. The high level of regulatory power that "management" implies is far beyond the power we can exercise in the above examples, and it will also exceed the power we will exercise in extremely complex systems in the future.