Delos’ End Game – We Still Don’t Know

Published April 30, 2018 · Updated July 6, 2022

Hi Guys,

It’s Ken L, back with more Westworld musings. But first, whether or not this makes it on the Telegraph this week, THANK YOU SO MUCH for including my last email and my voicemail on last week’s episodes! My girlfriend and I are huge fans and it made our entire week to be part of the Shat on TV experience.

Without further ado, I posted the following to Reddit:

A popular theory is that Delos is taking powerful guests and replacing them with hosts in the real world. The DNA harvested from hosts is used to clone the guest bodies and the recorded experience is used to program the behavior of the guest. But I see a major flaw to this theory – recording guest experiences in the Parks is a HORRIBLE method of creating AI versions of the guests.

Last episode, William tells James Delos that Westworld “is the only place in world where you get to to see people as they truly are.” It stands to reason, then, that recorded guest experiences in the Parks won’t capture the way that a guest acts in the real world because the entire allure of the Parks is that you can act differently – unrestrained – free from consequence and judgement. Thus, a host AI based on these recordings would be of little to no value in the real world because it would be based off of a guest’s hidden personality traits. The “Clone and Replace” plan would end up looking like an outwardly regular person (like William) going to the Park for a week and coming back with a dramatically different personality (like the Man in Black). People would notice.

The “Clone and Replace” theory gets even less plausible when you think about your own human experience. There’s more than just “Real World Ken” and “Westworld Ken”, right? There’s “Work Ken” and “Family Ken” and “Relationship Ken” and “Friend Ken.” Not that I’m duplicitous, but think about it – we all have different versions of ourselves that come out around other people. Some are more private than others. So maybe Delos could get a feel for “Work Ken” and even “Friend Ken” from spying on me in public. Then they could get “Westworld Ken” if I visit the Park. Fine. But they’re going to have a hell of a time replicating “Family Ken” and “Relationship Ken” without some heavy-duty espionage. These are the most private versions of myself and the versions exhibited around the people who know me best (and, thus, most likely to recognize a host copy). If Delos can somehow pull that off, then what’s the benefit of host recordings? Just clone my DNA from the Park and use your spy intel for the behavior.

The show makes a point of saying Delos is recording guest experiences, yet this recording isn’t a reasonable tool for making host replacements. Either this is a big plot hole (doubt it) or Delos is up to something else entirely.

-Ken L

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