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Westworld is a hell of a show, but the sense of dread it elicits is nothing new. Pygmalion sculpted a woman who came to life. Same goes with the Golem, only with mud. The amalgamated Frankenstein jolted awake to get all murderous. Humans creating life in their own image is a cornerstone of the realm of fiction. And until recently, they’ve stayed there. But today, ever-sophisticated robots are graduating from Disneyland-style animatronics into increasingly realistic, intelligent beings. Take the famous human replicas of Hiroshi Ishi­guro. Or the theatrical androids from Engineers Arts in the UK, or Sophia, the humanoid without a scalp (OK, maybe that one’s not particularly intelligent). They’re all so entrancing, it’s easy to forget how ethically problematic they could be.

Not in the homicidal Westworld sense—androids anywhere near that smart or physically capable are so far off, it’s not even worth speculating. No, more pressing are the surprising social problems that will come with realistic humanoid robots, which might work the front desk of hotels, or stand in for us at the office, or live with us as companions.

Google ran smack into an early manifestation of those problems last month, when it debuted its Duplex AI-powered voice assistant. The audio algorithm is realistic enough to fool humans into thinking it’s human—and it turns out people don’t like being tricked. Google was forced to clarify that Duplex would introduce itself first as an AI. Which kinda defeats the purpose of making a realistic voice assistant in the first place, but whatever.

Ethical stumbles like this can challenge the budding relationship between humans and physical machines, too. Take ElliQ, a robot-tablet combo that reminds the elderly to stay active while acting as a window into their family’s social media feeds. ElliQ’s designers went out of their way to remind the user they’re talking to a robot. “The voice we say has a robotic accent, so we’re not trying to hide that in a voice that’s human,” says Dor Skuler, CEO of Intuition Robotics.
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