Thandie Newton and Angela Sarafyan in Westworld.
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Westworld raises uncomfortable questions about A.I., VR, and video games

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 23 min

Techies and gamers should pay attention to HBO’s Westworld, which debuts on Sunday as a major TV show that delves into human artificial intelligence. The sci-fi series explores the morality of creating human-like artificial intelligent beings, how we should treat them, and what the difference is between humans and machines.

In a press briefing, I talked with the creators of the show, and during that conversation, video games, virtual reality, and real-world technology came up a lot.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.