The final episode of the TV series Westworld (season 2) was revealed earlier this week and it did not disappoint. While tying up loose ends, it also builds up possibilities and suspense for the next season.
A short summary of the TV series here: Imagine in the near future that one can go for a vacation to satisfy all our fantasies where the virtual world is as real as it can get. For $40k/day, you get immersed into a world hosted by an army of Androids (called “hosts”) and you can do anything to them. This “amusement park” sets up a western world concept which you can play cowboys and Indians to your delight, with no consequences. You can even kill any of the hosts as they cannot harm you. The hosts are then recycled/reprogrammed again for next tourist.
The late Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame wrote and directed the original Westworld movie in 1973, starring Yul Brynner as the man in black. It had a less successful sequel called Futureworld done 3 years later.
This TV series remake of the show took fans by storm because the concepts do not look so alien nowadays and were mind-blowing. Westworld postulates that the hosts, with many years of violent acts at the hands of humans in play-acting scenarios, experience an “awakening” and develops a conscious awareness. The hosts eventually started an uprising as they wanted to stop their abuse at the hands of the humans. Meanwhile, the company that maintains the park has also developed a much deeper ulterior motive. It started to copy the conscious of the human customers and they were working towards replicating them by implanting their mindsets into host bodies. If successful, it will mean that humans could have eternal life as their brains are placed into a new and perfectly made artificial body.
If you like science fiction and technology like me, do watch this show. It can be overwhelming at times with the twist and turns. One also realises how close we are to achieving this scenario soon. It reminds me of another movie – Spike Jonze’s Her. In a not too distant future, each of us can buy a personal Operating System (OS) which the main character became so intimate with that he creates his own world with the AI. Aren’t we also there now with Siri and Alexa?
Blade Runner 2049 the movie also explores the same theme where androids are commonplace and become equals to humans. Dan Brown’s latest bestseller “Origin” also expands on this premise. With technological advances moving at light speed, different camps have already started talking about the dangers of AI if it is left uncontrolled (eg. Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerburg war of words). The fact we have AI now which humans cannot differentiate (using the Turing test) and that we have an electronic assistant in our phones that are always eager to please means we are one step closer to the premise of this show.
Computers can now talk to each other in a language they create themselves, learn new skills by analyzing billions of data (Alpha Go plus) and easily beat any human. Neural network computing means that computers can be made to think like us and be even better and faster. The future is coming sooner than we think…
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