Technologists say we're a long way from the kind of sentient robots we see in the science fiction series "Westworld" — but some of the show's thought-provoking scenarios should already give us pause. In the show "Westworld," people travel to a western theme park filled with humanoid robots called "hosts." The machines think and interact like real people, but since they aren't living beings, people treat them with reckless abandon. That world gets turned upside down when the robots start remembering their past "lives" and those who took advantage of them. "It's a dangerous moral ground are we walking into, making systems that are reminiscent of humanity and then treating them in a way that is inhumane," said Illah Nourbakhsh, professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University.

HBO

HBO gave people a glimpse of what a real "Westworld" theme park would be like during an immersive experience at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. Show co-creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy and agency Giant Spoon recreated the "Westworld" town of Sweetwater. Guests were sent on missions that involved interacting with the "hosts" and searching through the area for clues, similar to what the guests of the park do on the show. The buildings looked like they came straight from the series. There was one major change: The hosts were played by real people, not artificial intelligence (AI) robots. In total, 60 actors, six stunt people, six horses, and five bands were hired for the event. The final script was more than 440 pages.

The limits of AI

While AI becomes "smarter" through learned experience, we'd need a breakthrough for the technology to have "deep learning" like humans, Nourbakhsh said. Robots would have to learn the nuances of human desire to keep people compelled to talk to them, and we're simply not there, he said. "The most likely scenario [for a robot theme park today] would be having robot controllers from afar, like people in call centers," Nourbakhsh said. Another problem an AI robot theme park: Machines don't have very smooth motions, said Mark Riedl, associate professor of computer science at Georgia Institute of Technology. "They are uncoordinated, and don't have really fine grain dexterity to pull guns," Riedl said. "Even waiting tables is really, really hard."

HBO

Where Westworld meets the real world