East of Westworld
Westworld does not lie in the West, but in the mind.
Is it our choice whether Westworld becomes a reality in our world?
Craig Childs ends his book Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America in an ancient empty lakebed, and that is where Westworld's Season 2 leads us as well. Westworld feels like it picks up where Childs' book drops off, at the end of the Holocene, at the Party At The Beginning Of The World, at the age of humans. Westworld is the age of humans, but maybe all humans don't have to be born through the biologic birth canal.
The science fiction of the early 80's imagined a blended world of humans interacting with machines. But if to be human is to be real, and to be real is to be irreplaceable, and to be a machine is to not be real, then Westworld's Season 2 tells us that the consciousness on Earth tomorrow is not human or machine, but something else entirely.
I took a quick look at how we would arrive at Christopher Nolan and Lisa Joy's Westworld host.
Today we have two categories of AI:
Machine Learning: using algorithms to parse data, learn from it, and make a prediction. The machine can take large amounts of data, run it through algorithms, and perform tasks instead of getting specific instructions to accomplish a single task.
Deep Learning: a technique for implementing machine learning. Artificial neural networks in layers that speeds up and increases our ability to exceed human capabilities.
They belong to Type 1 and Type 2 categories of the 2.0 AI
Type 1: Reactive Machines: can make predictions about next moves based on an opponent's moves and considering all possibilities. Eg. IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer; chatbots
Does not have a concept of the past, does not have a concept of the infinite future, aren’t emotional
Type 2: Limited Memory: can look into the past. Eg. Self Driving cars that observe other car speeds and direction, which require past points of time.
Does not save the experience and learn from it to handle new situations
Type 3: Theory of Mind: can understand that people, creatures, and objects can have thoughts and emotions that affect their behavior. Takes into account motives and intentions.
Type 4: Self-awareness: can understand memory, learning and ability to base decision on past experiences.
This is where we end Season 2, at host self-awareness and the ability to do what perhaps even humans cannot; make their own choices. Lisa Joy explains, "Now, we're starting to question whether when you're looking at artificial intelligences and humans with their organic intelligence, who is really the one who is programmable, and who is the one who can actually have agency?" My favorite line in the last episode comes at the end "we gave each other a beautiful gift, that of choice". In John Steinbeck's East Of Eden, the phrase "thou mayest" was also used to describe choice.
I think we look for artifacts from the ice age and the stories they tell us because we want to find a mirror. This mirror is like the one that Delores has by keeping Bernard alive. Jeffrey Wright says, “They’re yin/yang. They are each other’s creator, and a part of each of them lives in the other. Together, they make a whole in some regards. There’s this idea of not existing unless one is witnessed and one is remembered. They need each other to provide a mirror reflection on themselves.”
We need that mirror reflection. Craig Child explains in Atlas Of A Lost World how the call that urged our earliest ancestors on from one hemisphere of the world to the other is forever linked with the one that brings us back.
"It is my belief -- not through any archeological evidence but because of the shape of the land and what Kanaan did when he got there -- that the Monte Verde archeological site was established because it reminded early boat travelers of their home. Whether their journey was a quick shot like Kanaan's, or something that took many generations, a complex expedition with grandparents and children in tow, people ended up at Monte Verde...Kanaan left Juneau for South America at twenty-three. He didn't return to Alaska for another three years. But he did return. And that matters. He was able to tell his family and friends about his journey. Unless the traveler returns, no knowledge can be passed on; no map will be laid out, no later migration of families will occur. Kanaan came back and told the people of Juneau, what he saw. He told them he'd passed beyond countless horizons, and at the far end of the world he found a familiar place with unfamiliar stars and an upside-down moon. Who could resist such a call?" (p 96 Childs)
Thus even though we may not want Ford's final narrative from Westworld, we may just feel the call to pursue it.