• 
• 5 min
• Kinolab
• 2016

Westworld, a western-themed amusement park, is populated by realistic robotic creatures known as “hosts” that are designed in a lab and constantly updated to seem as real and organic as possible. One of the robotic hosts, Dolores, recounts to the human guest William a memory of old times with her father and her attachment to lost cattle throughout the years. Directly afterward, she has a flashback to a former iteration of herself, which was killed in another narrative before being restored by the lab team. Later on in the narrative which William and his sadistic future brother-in-law Logan follow, Logan reveals his darker nature by shooting one of the robots and telling Dolores that she is a robot, a choice which disgusts William. Logan argues that his actions do not morally matter because this is a fake world full of fake people.

• AI Emotions and Rights
• Artificial Companionship and Therapy
• Technology Based Entertainment and Leisure

• 
• 4 min
• Kinolab
• 2016

Westworld, a western-themed amusement park, is populated by realistic robotic creatures known as “hosts” that are designed in a lab and constantly updated to seem as real and organic as possible. Bernard, a worker at the park, stumbles across robotic hosts that are monitored and directed solely by the park’s director, Dr. Ford. Ford reveals that these robots are an enactment of nostalgic memories from his younger days that he wishes to preserve, especially since they were built by an old friend of his. Relates to digital memory and delaying forgetting.

• Artificial Companionship and Therapy
• Mixed Reality
• Robots

• 
• 15 min
• Kinolab
• 1997

Vincent, an “invalid” from the proximate future, was born naturally and is therefore seen as less  than humans such as his brother Anton who were conceived in a computational genetic selection process to ensure that the best traits are carried on. Thus, in this eugenic society, biometric technologies such as finger pricks and other scans are used to detect superior and inferior human genomes. Vincent, relinquished to service jobs, steals the identity of a genetically superior man named Eugene to fulfill his goal of going on a space mission, yet is never able to let go of his sibling rivalry. However, Vincent sets himself up to prove that humans edited through this computational genomics project are not automatically superior to those naturally born.

• Fundamental Ethics
• Edited Humans
• Biometrics
• Computational Genomics

• 
• 5 min
• Science Alert
• 2019

A newly revealed patent application filed by Amazon raises privacy concerns over an upgrade to the virtual assistant Alexa, in which the system records everything a users says in 10-30 second bits to look out for a command.

• Data Privacy
• Assistive Technologies
• Data Mining
• Internet of Things

• 
• 5 min
• Wired
• 2019

Non-profit companies such as Thorn and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection are using existing software, particularly facial recognition algorithms, to discover ways to become more proactive in fighting child pornography and human trafficking on the dark web.

• Cyber Crime
• Digital Activism
• Machine Learning
• Biometrics

• 
• 7 min
• Kinolab
• 2013

At some point in the near future, Martha’s husband Ash dies in a car accident. In order to help Martha through the grieving process, her friend Sara gives Ash’s data to a company which can create an artificial intelligence program to simulate text and phone conversations between Martha and Ash. Through the chat bot, Ash essentially goes on living, as he is able to respond to Martha and grow as more memories are shared with the program.

• Artificial Companionship and Therapy
• Digital Immortality
• Machine Learning
• Data Mining