The League (Dating App)
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Westworld is an HBO science fiction thriller television series created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. The setting takes place in fictional Westworld, more or less an amusement park. The park is centered on android hosts in its technologically advanced story. Westworld caters to rich guests who can leave their mortal life behind and dive into the park, with so-called complete power of the hosts. The series was ranked as the most-watched first season of an HBO original series ever. With positive reviews for story and visuals, the series is coming back for a second season this year. The series had dominated any other show at the time. It averaged 11.7 million viewers throughout its run, even beating out Game of Thrones.
Pilot Season
‘A dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin.’ - Series Synopsis
The first episodes threw the audience right into Westworld to show the relationship between programmers and hosts. We were introduced to significant guests of the park and the ethics behind re-booting the hosts every night. The plotline was thick; it took a few episodes to truly understand how hosts would be brought into a new storyline according to specific guest interaction. It’s a lot. Long story short, the theme parks offers its visitors to play in the wild west — the large area of land is filled with hosts, which are androids that are pre-assigned to a narrative and socialize with guests. But although these are robots, they are indistinguishable from any other human. Their memories are wiped every day and the bots are set back in the place every morning. The guests step into the park told that they can do whatever they want to the robots without any harm, but that’s where the plot thickens.
Major Epi
Through captivating characters, we observe that Westworld’s hosts are beginning to discover their identities. As each episode progressed, each host began to retain more information on their background. Main characters thought to be human turn out to be androids, boundaries are tested by bold hosts who wish to turn the tables, and the guests are in for a brutal surprise.
One of the crowd-favorites of the series is Maeve. She is the backbone of the storyline and eventually sparks the idea of self-awareness. An important scene that sums all this mumbo jumbo up is when Maeve asserts her power over the human programmers in the park. All this fighting goes down and Maeve ends up getting her wish to see the levels of Westworld and how her entire identity has been a lie. The genuine emotion on Maeve’s face when watching another android be pulled apart and memory swiped is just a hint at her true heartbreak and feelings that grew from this android. This marked her beginning of what viewers thought to be consciousness and emotional suffering.
Takeover
The season’s finale ended with hosts shooting at guests and deciding to do it their way. But spoiler alert, it was part of the narrative the entire time. The audience is led to believe that due to machine learning, the robots decided to rebel — but this turns out to be a disappointment. We are taken back to Maeve, finding out that her desire to leave the park and free herself from Westworld was always programmed in her code. This brings the entire storyline back to the idea of how far self-awareness can truly go.
Dilemma of AI
Westworld is a fictional depiction of the power in lines of code. As a template for the potential of what AI holds is pretty scary. We’re living in a time where AI is nothing but a voice and a brain, but decisions can be made — cars are being driven autonomously and machines are starting to learn based on algorithms, so how far is this reality? This story reflects the android’s need for freedom and a reality of a simple program learning tasks and developing a form of human consciousness. Artificial intelligence will only continue to increase in our world. Of course, this show is decades away from necessary technological advancements for this type of living, but it could be the future.
In an interview last year, Stephen Hawking explains his concerns about artificial intelligence and how he believes they could replace human beings. He stated ‘The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A super-intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble.’ He spoke about the need for control and a plan to identity threats in machinery. Whether or not these machines are conscious, they will be able to think. We are on a path of extreme acceleration in technology and machine learning is just the beginning.
