Could a real-life version of Westworld be in our future?

When the original Westworld film came out in 1973, one of the biggest technological advancements of the day was the Xerox Alto — the first desktop computer to use a mouse and visual interface. Ethernet cables and fiber optics had just been invented, and the very first cell phone call was made that same year. The idea of humanoid robots was such a far-fetched idea that it could only seem at home in a science fiction movie.

Fast forward to 2020. HBO’s ambitious adaptation of Michael Crichton’s visionary movie is nearing the end of its third season. People own small handheld computer phones that have thousands of times the memory and processing power of the Alto. Robotic household assistants like Alexa and Google Home are becoming ever more commonplace. Companies and artificial intelligence experts debate the ethics of selling sex robots. The future of science fiction films past has arrived.

But have the ethical quandaries raised in those stories arrived as well?

The premise of Westworld has only become more relevant with time: a company with vast resources builds a theme park and populates it with androids that are so real they can pass as human, then sells admission to the super rich. The appeal is that people can go to Westworld and blow off steam — do any good or horrible thing they can think of to the robots, which have their memory regularly wiped. Of course, we all know how the story goes: the robots begin to remember what’s being done to them, and they are not pleased. They rebel, in bloody, brutal fashion.

Considering how far technology has come, it’s hard not to wonder: how possible is it that we’ll see a real Westworld in our lives, or at least something like it?

First things first: Do we actually have the capacity to make lifelike, artificially intelligent robots? The answer is yes and no. While robotics are growing ever more advanced, to date nothing has been produced that could actually go so far as to pass as a human being. Yes, the robots of today are so close that a quick glance might be confusing…but we’re a far cry from having our hearts stolen by an Evan Rachel Wood lookalike.

Then again, in just under 50 years we’ve gone from that Xerox Alto clunker to robots as lifelike as Sophia. Developed by Hanson Robotics, Sophia is considered the world’s “first robot citizen.” Her purpose is to help study and develop AI, with the dream of creating a truly sentient artificial intelligence. Thus far, her creators have brought her to The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Good Morning Britain, and even the United Nations.

So the question becomes less “can we make a lifelike AI” and more “how long until robots are truly lifelike.” It could be sooner than you think.

Regardless of how long it takes to make androids that can truly pass as humans, the human desire to find a use for robots has progressed much faster. While you can see examples of this everywhere from factories to automated call systems, it’s perhaps most apparent in the burgeoning sex robot industry. Whether robots can truly fool the human eye or not, there is already a demand for them as companions, with robots already on the market to fulfill demand.

Sidestepping the ethical debate over the existence of “sexbots,” let’s bring things back around to Westworld for a minute. The idea behind the futuristic theme park is that it’s a place where humans can go to act out all their fantasies on unwitting robots. So when considering whether a park like that might become a reality, it’s important to think about the human urges that would warrant it in the first place. Is it realistic to think that people would actually want a place like Westworld enough for it to be built?

The answer to that question, in my opinion, is a disconcerting yes. The evidence is right in front of us, when we look at current events surrounding the sex robot industry. In 2017, Houston barred a company from opening what they claimed would be a “sex robot brothel” in the city. That company, KinkySDollS, already has a showroom in Toronto where customers can come to buy “lifelike talking sex robots.” Some of them even have a programmed setting to “verbally resist sexual advances.” If that doesn’t sound like something straight out of Westworld, I don’t know what does.

Concern over these issues is so great that a bill was brought to Congress later in 2017 to ban childlike sexbots in the U.S.: the “Curbing Realistic Exploitative Electronic Pedophilic Robots Act,” or CREEPER for short (an acronym that make you wonder if they chose the name just to use it). It passed unanimously the following year.

There’s one more facet to this issue that, as a sci-fi geek, I’d be remiss not to bring up. Understandably, nearly all of the debate on robot ethics revolves around the emotional and physical safety of the human beings interacting with them. But if the field of artificial intelligence grows — if robots like Sophia become more commonplace — then the ethics of what people are doing to the robots needs to be addressed as well.

This is such a science fiction concept — really, it’s the entire foundation that Westworld was originally built upon. One of the hallmarks of great science fiction, however, is that it forces us to examine the human condition, to set aside our preconceptions of what it means to “be human” in favor of a deeper understanding. Given the uncanny timeliness of HBO’s Westworld, I can’t help but feel there’s an important lesson to be learned from it. The debate over how to integrate AI and robots into society is real, and it is here right now. Science fiction has become our reality.

So where does all this leave us? We’ve established that while the technology may not be quite at Westworld levels yet, it’s certainly on its way. We’ve seen that, for all of humanity’s redeeming qualities, the red flags of behavior that are so often seen in fiction also exist in our actual reality. The idea of a real-life park akin to Westworld no longer seems as far-fetched as it might have in Michael Crichton’s day.

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