While I agree with all of the sentiment here that season 3 was a garbled mess and didn't do the franchise any favors, season 4 was definitely trending back upwards from that low point. And while I agree that I really don't have any idea where a season 5 would have gone... I certainly could not have foreseen where season 4 was gonna go either... and it surprised me in a good way. I hope they will reconsider, or provide some alternative way to for Lisa and Jonah to conclude their storyline, even if it doesn't involve multi-million dollar budgets.
While I certainly don't ever expect them to return to the perfection that was the finale of season 1, I think Westworld could have finished strong if given the chance.

I truly believe this is a frivolous lawsuit. Yeah.... it might be abused. But that isn't a good reason to not have the alert system.
If I were a judge I'd tell them to come back after its been mis-used at least once. Then offer injunctive relief... not before.

Just add to the documentation at the beginning a disclaimer:
All servers outlined within this document are consenting and mature and this is a voluntary arrangement as part of a healthy relationship. Any mention of inhumane things are role-play only.

So the whitehouse staff is claiming that his 5am shitter tweets are official whitehouse policy.... but that his personal account is not official government documentation and thus subject to freedom of speech concerns?

Sorry guys, you cannot have it both ways, either its the depraved private musings of a senile old man on his own personal account
OR
It is official government documentation and policy announcements, and thus you cannot censor whom has access to reply.

Agree 100%.
We only know that other humans are self aware because:
A) they tell us they are
B) we ourselves are
C) because we are all humans we can extrapolate B -> A as a proof.

This is duck typing at its finest... if an AI acts exactly as if it were self aware.... who are we to doubt it. We'll never be able to experience the world the same way this hypothetical AI would.

Honestly I would be MORE concerned about making a super intelligent self aware (and self preserving) AI by ACCIDENT than by design.
As many have said, we actually don't have a clue how consciousness actually works, or how it emerges at this point. Therefore why do we assume the only way to achieve consciousness is by intentionally designing it?
Remember how Terminator 2 outlined it:
"The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug."
Now I'm not saying this is an imminent threat, but its an example of:
They weren't setting out to make an AI that was self aware.... but it happened as a side effect.
I think that is all that Musk and other technologists are calling for, not to abort all AI research, but to have a serious adult discussion about how to progress safely.

You also must understand that as a company that utilizes AI in some way Zuckerberg has a vested interest in continuing to use that AI unhindered and to develop the technology in whatever way they see fit without restriction. So of course he would dismiss criticism that might someday effect his business model.

I don't believe in fear mongering, but I think in this case Musk is correct. With how fast computer software can be developed, and with how slow government moves (let alone understands), and with how thoroughly government regulators have been corrupted by corporate interests; it makes a lot of sense to have a serious conversation to set down some ground rules. Things that would trigger a re-evaluation of the technology. There is no sense putting limits on AI at the moment because clearly it is a long way off from overtly dangerous applications, but as Musk said, if we wait until AFTER a potentially dangerous application of AI has been disclosed it may be too late (due to entrenched interests).
So maybe somethings along the lines of the following would be appropriate at this time:
When AI in 5 years (or less) is estimated to be able to achieve X proficiency this automatically triggers a re-examination of the risks posed.
Development of sentient AI --- forbidden (for example)
Development of AI weapon systems --- forbidden

Yeah seriously..... that is the BEST safety feature for any car that has anything approaching self driving functionality. If the car gets confused..... and doesn't know how to handle the situation... PULL THE HELL OVER. Heck, if the driver is ignoring your safety warnings.... having the car come to a complete stop will get their attention. (or they are asleep... either way... good idea0

A likely part of the problem and why those "unworking" people you encountered were disruptive to society is because they were seen as "takers" and as such there was a social stigma associated to receiving that benefit.
People who are called undeserving or lazy by the greater community tend to internalize that message and as such act out.

Only in the case where contraceptives are unavailable.

And you also have it wrong.
If Uber is the client of the driver, then sure the driver may not be able to negotiate the pay rate with uber..... but they should be allowed to set their prices for their OWN customers on the other end of the transaction.
So say Uber says "to use our service you must pay us $2 per transaction"
OK, thats fine. If the driver wants to charge the people they are providing rides for $10 or $20 and then pay uber their flat $2 that is all well and good.
BUT Uber is setting the prices that the driver WILL charge to their clients.
This is what transforms it from an independent contractor arrangement into an employee -> employer relationship.

I've been forecasting exactly the thing mentioned in the blurb for years. There are only so many hours in the day for people to seek to be entertained. Entertainment comes in many forms television being one of them. So lets say that the hours people watch TV (or other media) per day is capped at 8hrs eg, every waking moment that isn't work or sleep. That means that television viewership can ONLY grow at the expense of other television viewership OR at the population growth rate. I would wager good money that the number of hours of media produced per year is going up at a rate substantially above the population growth rate.

Added to the fact that the old media content is still accessible the figure of "new content produced per year" should probably be adjusted up by some scaling factor of content produced in previous years (probably a belle curve since the older the show/movie gets the less likely it is to be seen).

A race to the bottom is ensuing.... the problem is its a race to the bottom in terms of quality.... not price. If they cannot get the viewership, they cannot get the money to support the show. Advertising revenue is more or less fixed at # of eyeballs on screen. This yields designing shows for the lowest common denominator.

Wouldn't it be nice if a tv show when its announced would tell you how long it was scheduled to run. Say if networks were forced to buy the show as a package and not piecemeal episode by episode or season by season? It would kinda force network execs to commit to shows or face legal recourse. Say if they cancel it after 2 seasons and it was budgeted for 5, they have to pay a big penalty to the show creator for breach of contract.

It might also have a beneficial effect on the show creators whereby they know how long the show is going to run for before starting and they can pace themselves. It could also help prevent "jumping the shark" where shows just go on endlessly because its still profitable but long ago lost all purpose.

Even 10 or 20yrs at max is WAYYYYYY too long given how fast technology and culture is moving along. Either something that is around 1 year in time or perhaps measured in how much profit it has generated could be a more useful measure. Perhaps an unregistered copyright lasts 1 month while a registered copyright lasts 1 year, or until the costs entered on the copyright registration form have been 200% met. Whichever comes first. I think a 200% profit is more than enough incentive to keep producing new works without allowing anyone to rest on their laurels for too long. I think copyright infringement would dramatically go down if the public had any sort of reasonable expectation that they could get the product for free at some point in the foreseeable future. Piracy is a symptom of a system that is so far out of whack as to be ludicrous.

I certainly hope that some major economic reforms occur within my lifetime. It would be intensely interesting, even if it proved fatal.... still interesting.

Or we could actually just ditch copyright since it doesn't really make sense in an age where copying things is instantaneous. While I do think authors and creators need to get paid this way no longer works, time to think of another business method. Maybe try a decade without copyright in any form. If suddenly no music/movies/books are created and authors are starving in the streets then we can reinstate it (modified). I think its time we gave market innovators a chance to come up with new business models that work in the digital age rather than forcing them to work against the system (with things like the GPL or other free licenses to work around copyright)

Sounds to me like we are getting a head start on blotting out the sun to stop those pesky solar powered robots from wiping us out. They will never find a power source as abundant as the sun. What could go wrong?