FUTURE BEINGS

As class has begun to get more complex, I start to see my classwork in everything. The future is right on the horizon at all times and we are beginning to understand and use the tools to get closer and closer. In the realm of popular imagination, the entertainment industry has always visualized what can be and how us as conscious people react to what it would be like to live that life. Tonight, I watched the first episode of the new series on HBO ‘WestWorld’. A futuristic time in which the genius of mind built artificial intelligence as a method of entertainment, sending paid guest into the realm of the wild-west in a very real yet virtual experience. The AI can talk, think, fuck, bleed, & die. As crazy as this concept seems, what is stopping what we see in the today’s entertainment becoming a glimpse of our future. As technology grows, VR/AR/ & AI technology becomes more real, what is the next step forward?

A quote I took away from the first episode reads something a long the lines of this, when a “host” AI being goes a bit crazy, one scientist says to another, “ I want to talk to you about the update, there shouldn’t have been one in the first place. Dr. Ford keeps making them more life-like, does anyone truly want that? Do you want to think that your husband is really fucking that beautiful girl or that you actually just shot someone? This place works because the guests know that the hosts aren’t real. Role it back, make the hosts more manageable.”

When will AI beings become so real that we cannot tell the difference? Computers are getting smarter everyday and so will the relating AI. In the case of the show Westworld, when you treat any being in such brutal and inhumane fashion, it is inevitable that a negative and aggressive response will follow. We see this in our own human history but what will happen when the oppressed is not that of blood and organs but copper wire and circuits.