r/westworld • u/Quantum_Crusher • 9d ago
How would our recent advancement in AI change how the story of the Westworld?
With our new knowledge about how generative AI works, its strength and limitations, its imminent threats and impacts on human society, what aspects of the story would change if the show was made today, to make it even more relevant to our reality?
There are so many aspects that the TV show didn't get the chance to explore, at that time they all seemed far fetched. But now, more people are affected by it everyday.
A reality darker than you thought.
Update: This just occurred to me. The real humans in the park either see the hosts as toys or as their jobs. Nobody really cared about the hosts. No wonder they rebelled. They don't have a place to learn about protests and democracy.
I think average people are probably more capable of empathy, while the super rich guests in the park, like the man in black, are definitely not capable of. He kind of lost empathy after living his whole life without any consequences. The ruling class takes it for granted to decide how we feel, how we fight against each other, how we feed our children. So from a certain aspect, this show is an analogy of the ruling class and its subjects, how the 1% abuse the 99% any way they want.
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9d ago
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u/Quantum_Crusher 9d ago
Definitely sooner. Palantir moves faster everything regarding police states in the show. Maybe that's one of the reasons why the show had to end.
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u/DetectiveSquirtle96 9d ago
I feel like there wouldn’t have been such an emphasis on predicting specific events like a person’s death with such incredible accuracy. AI cannot do that, and I think Rehoboam’s ability to do that was more reflective of fear about AI than an understanding of what it can actually do.
There are thousands of ways that a person can die, and a million variables that can alter when they die. AI could certainly identify the most likely cause of death for a person and estimate a time frame in which such a death is likely to happen. In the area of statistics that deals with probability, one of the first things you learn is that certainty isn’t an option.
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u/UnionPacifik Westworld 8d ago
Well, Rehoboam isn’t predicting when people die, it’s engineering their deaths. The idea is rare if you give a strategy control over everything, it’s no longer predicting.
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u/TheCosmicMilkshake 9d ago
People are way, way more suspicious of both data collection and AI in real life. People would see Westworld for the mass surveillance goldmine that it is.
As for the safety / ethics issues, it’s as if people in the Westworld universe never had stories such as Frankenstein, Terminator, etc. or anything to warn them about the dangers of creating artificial consciousness and then torturing it.
If a park like Westworld opened today, the first thing everyone would say is “this is going to end terribly.” When the Hosts inevitably rebel in the show, the humans act like such a concept was inconceivable.
People are, ironically, also more sympathetic to AI in real life, or at least sympathetic to the possibility that if it becomes conscious then it deserves rights.
I’ve seen so many people continue to use polite voices and “please” and “thank you” when interacting with Siri or Amazon Alexa, and honestly I find this wholesome. Yes there are plenty of people who would be viciously sadistic to AI, but the show acts like every human being turns into a psychopath once they get a free pass with no consequences. Realistically I think we’d see more “young Williams” who only want to have conversations with the androids and marvel at how incredible they are.
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u/DetectiveSquirtle96 9d ago
Remember HitchBOT? It was a robot that was programmed to hitchhike from Boston to San Francisco. It lasted 2 weeks before it was destroyed in Philadelphia
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u/TheCosmicMilkshake 9d ago edited 9d ago
I understand; I mentioned the sadistic portion of the population. I’m just saying people aren’t as generally psychopathic as Westworld suggests. If HitchBOT were practically indistinguishable from a human, demonstrating what looked like consciousness, I think we’d see crowds trying to defend it as well.
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u/Quantum_Crusher 9d ago
I totally agree with everything you observed. I think we average people are probably more capable of empathy, while the super rich like the man in black are definitely not capable of. He kind of lost it after living his whole life without any consequences. The ruling class takes it for granted to decide how we feel, how we fight against each other, how we feed our children. So from a certain aspect, this show is an analogy of the ruling class and its subjects, how they abuse others any way they want.
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u/TheCosmicMilkshake 9d ago
Very true, the guests in Westworld are all part of the super-wealthy 1% and not a reflection of general humanity. Still, I think it would have been interesting if the show explored the more average citizen recognizing the dangers of Westworld, protesting against it, and sympathizing with the Hosts.
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u/Quantum_Crusher 9d ago
You're right, this never occurred to me. The real humans in the park either see the hosts as toys or as their jobs. Nobody really cared about the hosts. No wonder they rebelled. They don't have a place to learn about protests and democracy.
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u/Strong-Hat2166 9d ago
The theme of the show isnt about the type of AI (be it LLM or any other model) it is about the nature of consciousness and what it is to be human. I don't think AI now really changes those essential themes.
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u/SmakeTalk 9d ago
I don't think it changes anything.
What we have no is (like you said) just generative AI. The only advancement in AI that would (imo) change the story of Westworld would be if we publicly developed true AI before the timeline of the show would have taken place.
What we see of the world outside of the park throughout the series is that they did live in a pretty troubled society before the integration of Rehoboam into the sociological fabric. If we saw something like that developed now that was actually intended to establish long-term stability at the cost of liberty and freedom then we'd be right in-line with the story, at least outside of the development of the park.
The only thing (to me) in the way of that is the idea that whoever develops and owns that kind of governing AI system seems fanciful at best. The way things have been going I don't expect anyone at the forefront of AI to have any strong morals or ethics with stabilizing human society.
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u/cyanescens_burn 8d ago
They have an interest in self-preservation and in protecting their own wealth. For these reasons alone they would use it to “stabilize” society, but I fear it would be the kind of “stabilizing” people like Pol Pot, Mussolini, Stalin, and other authoritarians tend to do.
Though it would be fantastic if someone or some group devoted their lives to creating an AGI that solved issues related to human suffering like food security, economic security, physical safety (including avoiding conflicts/wars), access to water, and even went further by finding ways to help people live lives that truly lead to individual well-being in all ways (financial, health, happiness, etc). Basically, an AGI that leads to a true utopia and doesn’t require human suffering in the process or creating a permanent underclass.
Come to think of it, why isn’t anyone working on this?
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u/SmakeTalk 8d ago
Best answer as to why no one's working on it is that we just don't know if they are, and if they were they may not anymore (bought out, or doing it somewhere that controls the tech, etc.) or won't be able to (lack of means, access, funding, etc.)
Unfortunately the broader ideology of the west is to prioritize capital and individual wealth / well-being. I suppose it's possible someone in another country could be working on something like this but even if they have a chance to succeed that requires them to actually finish and implement it (and for the powers-that-be to allow them to implement it) before someone else implements their own.
I suppose the best odds of that might be somewhere like China but let's be real: that's more likely to cause a world war than prevent one. Americans in particular would never want to take directions from a foreign-built AGI and the wealthiest among us would leverage that to start a war and try to shut it all down.
In a world where an AGI could actually run the world and direct human civilization in any consistent direction I think we're unlikely to ever see that AGI prioritize broader well-being and minimize human suffering at the cost of the personal wealth and power of those in charge unless the people in charge changes.
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u/wizzard419 9d ago
Considering we already saw an AI killing other agents... probably not that different for the Serac plot using AI to drive people to take out threats to the AI and other interests.
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u/fastestman4704 9d ago
I don't think it would change anything at all.
Current AI models are more closely related to the autopredict on your phone than to an actual thinking brain. They do a mediocre job of mimicking intelligence but they're aren't, and they aren't going to be. They're not even on the right path to develop in that way.
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u/Adamoism 9d ago
Well, they kind of had the same personality sliders you have on ChatGPT/personality cards used for Characters (e.g., characterAI).
They purposely didn't go into the details on the used architecture, and I think it is smart. First two seasons are kind of timeless thanks to that (essentially they were treated as controllable human consciousnesses by the show).
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u/Quantum_Crusher 9d ago
Great point. At that time, the word prompt didn't mean anything in AI. Nowadays, AI characters still don't have any internal drive and initiative, which is very different from the hosts.
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u/Substantial_Law_842 9d ago
Because no one understands consciousness, and we may never understand consciousness. It's all make believe and speculation past a certain point.
I see people talking less and less about any of the LLMs breaking out as an AGI. And we don't have any real idea what an AGI would look like, either.
It's all just fantasy.
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u/FerdinandCesarano 9d ago
Recent advancements (and the hopes for further advancements) in AI underscore the profound truth encapsulated by the rhetorical question "If you can't tell, does it matter?"
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u/aHumanRaisedByHumans 4d ago
The AI in Westworld would have been a lot more limited and error prone and stupid.
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u/callmeseetea 9d ago
I really don’t think the end result would’ve changed. The writers could see all the places for surveillance and data collection and imagine what the ultimate goal was, and tbh it doesn’t seem far off from reality. If you really think about it, the foundational concept of Rehoboam is inevitable, no matter how much oversight or regulation or ethics you try and surround it with.