Dolores is an AI character in Westworld who achieves consciousness.
Dolores is an AI character in Westworld who achieves consciousness.
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Westworld season 2 opener reinforces need for ethical AI (spoilers)

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 5 min

Tonight’s premiere episode of Westworld season two is littered with bodies. They’re both artificial intelligence hosts and dead human beings as well. It’s a reminder of the consequences of what can go wrong when we put the race for technology ahead of ethics that governs what we should or shouldn’t do with that technology.

At the close of the last season, the AI hosts of Westworld gain independent sentience, and they rebel against their masters, slaughtering the humans who subjected them to inhumane treatment and allowed them to be used as the instruments for human resort goers to live out their (usually) worst fantasies.

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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.