Warning: Mild spoilers for the second season of Westworld to follow.
Westworld is a TV series that is synonymous with heavy conversations around artificial intelligence and what it means to be human in a world where the distinction between man and machine is blurry. It captures the zeitgeist well, tapping into the elemental fear of robots taking over and juxtaposing it with the ethical dilemma of treating the same robots as equals if they were to attain consciousness. But in the second episode of the ongoing season, a conversation between two characters, one old and one young, shows something else at the core of the fictional theme park: advertising.
The older character is deliberating on whether to invest in Westworld. According to him, the technology is great and it is all very well to create an immersive world that is fantastical, but these are not sufficient reasons to spend his money. The younger man interjects and says that what the theme park offers to the people who run it is far more valuable than what it offers to its guests. And this, he says, is the ability to peek into the lives of people, see what they desire, and use it for advertising and marketing. His argument is accepted.
This is a clever nod to the real world that already exists today, a world in which advertising is all pervasive and is made possible by the proliferation of data and the ways in which it can be processed. It is sobering to reflect on the impact this might have on the development of new technologies.
I’m looking forward now to see if the upcoming instalment of Jurassic World, set in another theme park, also manages to throw in a reference to advertising!