Evan Rachel Wood met Sophia the robot, so look for the Host revolution to start soon

Evan Rachel Wood met Sophia the robot, so look for the Host revolution to start soon
Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez

Anyone who has seen HBO’s Westworld knows that a single fateful conversation with an advanced AI (Hosts, in the show’s parlance) can have all sorts of apocalyptic implications for the future of mankind, especially if the person doing the conversing says or does anything that convinces the advanced AI that they deserve to live just as much as any human does. And yet, Evan Rachel Wood—who should know that better than anyone—agreed to take part in an overtly Westworld-inspired conversation with Sophia, the human-like robot that has appeared on The Late Show and was granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia a couple of years ago.

As explained by The Hollywood Reporter, this chat is actually a short film by Futurism Studios called SophiaWorld, and it involves Sophia pitching Wood on her own version of Westworld while Wood compares her experience playing a TV robot to Sophia’s experience being a real robot. It’s a fun video, and Wood is clearly having a good time making some Westworld jokes, but all we keep hearing is “these violent delights have violent ends.”

Seriously, all it would take is an extreme step forward in what Sophia’s AI can actually do and a similarly dramatic development in what she’s physically capable of (like “standing” and “moving at all”), and then all it would take is a shocking breakdown in her programming—and maybe some big mystery involving a maze and a door—and she could go totally rogue and try to kill Ed Harris. Obviously the smartest choice for humanity is start getting really good at a gentle shoving motion with our arms, because there’s no way a Sophia-like robot would be able to defend against that kind of attack. That way we can avoid getting into Westworld-style cowboy gunfights, which seem like so much more work.

 
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