Artificial intelligence expert and RPI professor Selmer Bringsjord will lecture Wednesday on the concepts behind the HBO series Westworld.

Artificial intelligence expert and RPI professor Selmer Bringsjord will lecture Wednesday on the concepts behind the HBO series Westworld.

RPI artificial intelligence expert looks at Westworld

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Fans of the innovative HBO series "Westworld" a futuristic tale of life-like robots mixing with guests of a Wild West-styled adult theme park can hear Wednesday about how close such technology is from a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor involved in artificial intelligence research for the U.S. military.

"'Westworld' is an HBO series that deals with the 'big questions' of artificial intelligence (AI) in an undeniably vivid and timely way," said Selmer Bringsjord, director of the RPI Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Lab. "The real world will ineluctably move toward giving experiences to humans in environments that are at once immersive and populated with sophisticated AIs and robots."

Currently, Bringsjord is working on a multi-million dollar AI development project with support from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, which wants to advance military robotics for logistics and other missions. His work focuses on how to program a form of moral sense into AI, so that a robot not under continuous human control can make appropriate choices such as not harming innocent humans or causing unnecessary damage when faced with unexpected circumstances.

In "Westworld," robots are residents (called "hosts") of a corporate-owned Wild West theme park where they meet paying human guests who seek adventures including violence and sex, all while overseen by human staff. The first season was the highest-rated for an initial season in the history of HBO and the schedule for the second season has yet to be announced.

While all the technology necessary for such robotics does not exist today, much of it is rapidly developing, said Bringsjord, who also heads the RPI Department of Cognitive Science. His lecture: Is "Westworld" Our (Near) Future? is set for noon Wednesday on campus in Room 4101 of the Russell Sage Building on campus.

His research relies on the development of increasing levels of AI in computer systems, and then using that computing power to contain and employ concepts of morality, expressed as algorithms in programming language. What humans can choose through free will, and have developed through experience, philosophy and religious strictures, machines will have to grasp through mathematics and logic.

While the physical aspects and appearance of lifelike robots are now very possible, one of the biggest challenges facing AI today is creating a robot that can react, empathize and improvise when dealing with humans and its other surroundings.

The challenge is how to write computer code that can make "story-based entertainment and, for that matter, art engaging, and at the same time new and improvisational," said Bringsjord. "'Macbeth' is great, yes; but the witches give us the same ghoulish deal in every run, and Lady Macbeth has her way with her man in every run as well."

Such a repetitive, static experience at a robotic theme park would soon become tiresome to a human guest. "'Westworld' is based on the dream of allowing humans to enter stories in immersive environments in which new narrative is created on the fly by AIs themselves, drawing humans in," he said.

Currently, there is no known method to impart such improvisational ability to AI, as is possessed by human actors and authors. Some theme parks with robotic attractions have tried to work around this issue by also deploying human actors, so that some characters' reactions to visitors can be spontaneous, he said.

bnearing@timesunion.com 518-454-5094 @Bnearing10

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RPI artificial intelligence expert looks at Westworld - Albany Times Union