the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Just watched the new TV series 'Westworld'. Its quite well done, a little more sophisticated than the original movie. It was, like 'Total Recall' and Bladerunner' a thesis on the nature of memory, reality and how we determine the 'real' and the 'artificial' be it personal memories, written and oral history. In this age of media, where the internet has added another layer of obfuscation, AI is catching up with humans and there is talk of 'robot sex' cafes it is not outside the realm of possibility that someone might build a Westworld. If you think we are living in a computer simulation this would be a simulation inside a simulation

Deadwood + Matrix

Not bad so far

Not bad, but still a bit too complex to judge. It's worth continued viewing, though.

Review of series


Westworld is introducing artificial intelligence concepts we're already grappling with today
Kim Renfro, INSIDER
The second episode of "Westworld" made a significant leap when it came to explaining "glitches" in the robotic hosts' programming. One of the programming employees, Elsie, expressed concern to Bernard about Peter Abernathy (the host who went "crazy" in the premiere).
Peter Abernathy began reciting threatening lines from his old narratives. HBO
"Let me at least pull the hosts who had contact with him," Elsie asks Bernard. "Like the daughter — Dolores. Because if this is not a dissonant episode, then whatever Abernathy had could be contagious. So to speak."
Elsie expressed serious concern to Bernard about the hosts programming. HBO
Bernard denies the request, explaining that Dolores was examined and cleared. But in the scene immediately following this exchange, we watch as Dolores seems to "infect" another host with "consciousness" by repeating what might be a trigger phrase: "These violent delights have violent ends."
The show's co-creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy attended a "Westworld" panel at New York Comic Con on October 9, and they were asked directly about this phrase and it's significance in the second episode.
"This episode brought up the possibility of contagion," moderator Eric Goldman said. "Seems like we might have a sort of trigger?"
"That's pure speculation," Nolan replied after a brief pause.
"I will say I don't think that's the last time we'll hear that phrase," Joy added.
The mystery of where this trigger phrase (if that's what it is) originated aside, we were very curious about the concept of consciousness as a virus or contagion. INSIDER spoke with Christopher Atkeson, a professor at the Robotics Institute and Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, to learn more.
Atkeson began by reminding us that the market for simulated consciousness already exists. Products like Amazon Echo or iPhones have downloaded "personalities" in the form of Alexa and Siri — programs designed to speak to you as if they are a human assistant.
So we already are beginning to experiment with crafting and spreading consciousness through smart phones and home assistants, but those products begin with a human touch.
"You could ask the question, 'Could it happen without people?'" Atkeson tells INSIDER. "So now we're in the territory of what is called 'computer worms' or 'bots,' another term is a 'Trojan horse.' The basic idea is there's a piece of software on your computer that — either because it was programmed to or because it figured it out — discovers how to communicate with another computer and so-called 'infect it' with a piece of software."
Peter Abernathy was the first host to experience an "existential crisis" of sorts. HBO
Atkeson stressed that this is not a hypothetical situation — we're living in a world where artificial intelligence or computer programs are already capable of spreading software on their own.
"The whole spam industry is, to some extent, built off this," Atkeson says. "[People] don't buy computers to send you spam, they infect other peoples' computers which then send you spam [...] It's not hypothetical, it's already happening. And if instead of sending spam it was sending consciousness, boom. There you go, you're spreading consciousness everywhere."
Fiction enters this concept in "Westworld" when it comes to the development of consciousness in artificial intelligence. We haven't excelled in robotics the way Dr. Ford and his fictional Westworld team of programmers have, but that doesn't mean we aren't headed in that direction.
"So can we have complicated programs that know and understand? Yes, we already do," Atkeson says. "Can we have programs that replicate themselves and travel over a network? Yes, we already do. But the only thing that's missing is we don’t really know how to replicate consciousness. But we will, there's a huge market for it."
Are Bernard and Dr. Ford in over their heads? John P. Johnson/HBO
How robotics experts like Atkeson define and identify "consciousness" is a subjective discussion we'll save for another post, but we know the "Westworld" creators have spent a large amount of time dwelling on this. How do you decide whether artificial intelligence has reached a level of consciousness akin to humans? When do you decide to assign "personhood" to a robot?
"We're already living in a world of artificial intelligence — it's just you're not seeing a robot, you're seeing a smartphone," Joy said in an HBO clip about the realities of AI. "You think 'Oh this is a small leap, a small advance,' but if you look at everything in aggregate, we are moving towards a place where we've uploaded our lives and our thoughts. There's a cost to that."
When you can't tell if something is human or robot, we might think twice about how we treat it. HBO
Nolan has similar concerns about the rapid progression of AI technology. "[People have] started to think of this only as a question of science fiction, and the reality is these things are happening very quickly," he said in the same clip released by HBO. "I believe we're going to start grappling with some of these questions far earlier than we anticipated."
Fans of "Westworld" are in for more than just sex and guns — this series has clearly just begun when it comes to confronting our current understandings of AI technology and our moral obligations surrounding it. As for the mysteries embedded in the plot, we'll have to wait and see where the violent delights take us.

Saw second in series last night. Seems to be holding up. The mild mannered Anthony Hopkins exudes as much menace as he did with Hannibal Lecter. Theseries does not seem to have a defined direction at the moment, the original was a favorite scifi theme of robots running wild and destroying humans, it has a long history from Metropolis to Robocop. This series takes up where the previous one left off, exploring the convergence of humans and androids, so that they become virtually indistinguishable, with side references of mans inhumanity to man [which we see every day on the news] and destruction of the indigenous population [man in black=Christopher Columbus] Some of the scenes are surreal, particularly the chase.

Episode three is more interesting.

It is getting interesting, the technicians entering the 'false' world, the further exploration of the breakdown of ethics and morals in a world where 'you can do anything you like' without being penalized [a primer for dictatorship? ]

I'm enjoying watching the series. Here's a recent 60 Minutes episode on AI, that aired on 10/09/16,

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-artificial-intelligence-charlie-rose-robot-sophia/

Haven't seen the movie nor watched the series yet. Probably will buy it when it comes out in DVD

The most well-known method for testing machine intelligence is the Turing test. But when interpreted as only observational, this test contradicts the philosophy of science principles of theory dependence of observations. It also has been suggested that Alan Turing's recommendation of imitating not a human adult consciousness, but a human child consciousness, should be taken seriously.[36]

Other tests, such as ConsScale, test the presence of features inspired by biological systems, or measure the cognitive development of artificial systems.
Qualia, or phenomenological consciousness, is an inherently first-person phenomenon. Although various systems may display various signs of behavior correlated with functional consciousness, there is no conceivable way in which third-person tests can have access to first-person phenomenological features. Because of that, and because there is no empirical definition of consciousness,[37] a test of presence of consciousness in AC may be impossible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_consciousness

So how about that finale, eh?

I didn't really like Armistice too much until this episode. They were hobbled as Hosts.

Watching the last episode, about halfway through... Holy crap that's some twist! Did NOT see that coming at all... Kudos to the writers.

Wait.. which twist? What's the half life on spoilers?

The Ed Harris character's identity

I had suspected that for a while.

I did not expect the beach scene. That tripped me right out. The orchestration of everything to reach that point precisely on cue is just wow.

Say no more

Just finished... Now I understand why that episode is rated 9.9 on IMDb by 8,500+ people.

What I don't understand is why the next season's release dates are 2018 instead of 17...?