Like:What is consciousness?
Does an artificial intelligence have the same rights as a person?
Is AI a threat?
Credit: HBO
Dont worry, there are no spoilers.
LISA JOY: Thats a great question.
So we both thought a lot about the responsibilities of creating something.
I see parallels between the two.
With an AI, its the same thing.
Computers have this kind of recursive system where they can learn more and more things from the Internet.
But if you look at the Internet, its a lot of cats, pornography, and gossip.
A machine is what you put into it.
So I think the obligation that we have is to put in good, as well as bad.
I think also, like children, computers can get a mind of their own.
They should become better than us, and in some ways transcend us.
[A computer] could leapfrog human intelligence.
You must have seen the stories about Microsofts AI Twitter bot thatbecame a racist sexbotwithin 24 hours.
It reflected the culture it was raised in.
JONATHAN NOLAN:Ive been dealing with AI now on different projects for many years now.
Theres an urgency here because we really think this is imminent.
Were replaced by other species.
Lets just talk about what were doing, because its happening very quickly.
NOLAN: I think its both [a threat and a benefit].
Those are things we venture to explore.
Film and television have played with this question for decades.
How will they think?
What does it mean and what would it feel like for something whose consciousness had been built?
Was there concern about whether the viewers would accept non-human protagonists?
JOY: We were very conscious of it when we were writing the scripts.
Were going up against a hurdle of that not having been the historical norm.
And our concerns faded away when we saw the performances of our incredible actors.
NOLAN: This is a grey area for a lot of people.
You would feel bad if I snapped it off my knee.
Its very poignant, and when Wilson is swept away, it gets you.
Humans are these incredible empathy machines.
Were incredible at applying it to things that are almost absurd.
I watch my daughter with her stuffed animals, her toys.
Were very good at empathy.
At least, most of us are.
JOY: Right, because theres a spectrum.
NOLAN: There is.
And were all quite good about selectively turning it off.
With all of the actors, 99 percent [of playing an android] was in their performance.
Its an interesting intellectual challenge.
Its a graphic show.
Do you have certain boundaries in terms of what youll show a guest doing to these hosts?
One of the questions the show is asking is why do we watch these things in the first place?
What is this human fascination with violence?
We wanted to get underneath that and find out why people come to this park in the first place.
So there is a fair amount in the series of exploring that question.
Weve tried to do it in a way thats tasteful and compelling as possible.
I countered that Id commit acts of violence inGrand Theft Autothat Id never consider in real life.
But thats a debate thats generated by the episode.
NOLAN: When [Michael] Crichton made the original film, there were no video games, nothing.
There wasPong, thats it.
And now theresGrand Theft Auto, and the arrival this year of fully immersive commercially viable VR games.
We demoed VR last year and came away from the experience really shaken.
The rules set for these virtual spaces is flexible.
When people playGrand Theft Auto, they dont think about the moral repercussions of what theyre doing.
You dont feel bad when you turn the phone off and the Pokemon disappear.
You dont feel bad when you turn off the Xbox and those characters go away.
At what point does that line blur?
We loved approaching artificial intelligence from that perspective, of how it creeps in.
You arrive at this moment in which it gets really complicated.
It seems particularly challenging for actors playing the hosts every little movement you make gets scrutinized.
NOLAN:The conversations are endless, especially for the actors who are playing hosts.
They did a tremendous amount of research themselves.
JOY: Just watching the different ways in which they worked and channeled these characters was kind of incredible.
Evan is so young and strong and full of vitality.
She just transforms into this incredible heroine.
NOLAN: Its possible she may actually be a robot.
