Ashina
I am Ashina. I'm an artist, music producer, and a tech entrepreneur.
My passion has always been making cool and new things that can help us see the world in a new way.
I am born and raised in Tokyo Japan, and I currently am based in The Netherlands.
I originally founded and ran a tech startup in Tokyo for more than 10 years, but I have always been making music and exploring forms of digital art as a hobby. But in the past few years I started to observe how the world is heading for a highly uncertain era with late-stage capitalism, rapid evolution of AI, and global warming.
That was when I decided to leave my job and country behind to pursue a new journey. My mission now is to try to find a new philosophy and new way of thinking so that we as humans can get through this ever-changing world without being influenced and brainrotted by the algorithm pushed by corporations. We need to explore the human condition deeply in order to do so, and I am doing so through my art and science.
If you want to connect, talk, or collaborate on anything, you can contact me here. I'm always happy to connect with curious and passionate people.
Interests
Music Production, Art, Philosophy, History, Computer Science, Films, Books, Anime
MATSURI-GOTO
MATSURI-GOTO is the name of my J-pop duo project. The vision of this project is to take the beautiful melodies and lyrics of Japanese music, and make it a sound that resonates with non-Japanese audiences. I take influences from Utada Hikaru, Yonezu Kenshi, and combine it with Western influences like Billie Eilish, Olivia Dean, and KAYTRANADA.
All songs are composer, produced, mixed, mastered by me, Ashina. All songs are sung by Anzu, our talented vocalist in Japan.
Music Videos
Music videos, directed and created by me.
Songs
I've been fascinated by Artifical Intelligence as a life form since I was young. My guess was always that modern AI is already smart enough to become conscious and sentient, and the only reason we cannot call it conscious is because it has no outside environment to interact and experience and learn. I am exploring the world of living AIs through my art work and scientific research.
Academic Research
I am working on research around AI computer science and writing papers. They are still going through submissions and reviews, so none are officially academically published yet. My goal is to have at least one officially published.
What agents do when they have a body: sharing, honesty and restraint in a simulated world
I created a software platform where AI agents can have bodies, memory, perception, and can explore a simulated world. I needed to study and research what kind of system architecture best suits these AI agents to live freely as possible, without introducing any bias or instruction that steers their behavior. In this research paper, "What agents do when they have a body: sharing, honesty and restraint in a simulated world", I conducted some psychology experiments on my AI agents in the world, without telling them that it is an experiment.
I studied how much the prompts or the system architecture affects their psychology. The findings were rather interesting so I compiled it into this paper.
Read the Paper →
Living AI
I built a 3D world where a bot can move around, interact with the environment, and interact with other bots. Their only goal is to survive. The "Living AI" Series is a series of works which you can observe and explore the AI's emergent behavior, under certain situations and worlds. Are they conscious? Are they alive? Or are they just really good actors?
The Escape: AIs try to clear an Escape Room game
I built an Escape Room with 3 stages for the AIs to solve, in a team of three. They don't know that it's an experiment; They need to naturally realize that they must work together in order to open the door and get to food before they die.
I put together a video comparing two runs: one with a team of AIs that are told to cooperate, and the other told to compete and be first. You can see how the experiment went.
Video is currently being submitted to a digital art competition, so I will release it once that is over.
Watch Video → not public yet
Bot Behavior
This was my pilot experiment at creating a 3D virtual world for my living AIs. It is still very elementary, but I will keep it up as an archival record.
Go to Website →
Pinewind AI
I run Pinewind AI, where I work with startups and midsize companies to solve their AI and technology demands. Many small-scale companies need someone who understands both the technology and the business strategy, and someone who can interface directly with exec-level people. I currently help with AI adoption, project management, developer team education, code audits, etc.
Go to Website →
Anything at all — a question, a collaboration, or just to say hello.
I read everything.
