Fans of the innovative HBO series "Westworld" -- a futuristic tale of life-like robots mixing with guests of a Wild West-styled adult theme park -- can hear Wednesday about how close such technology is from a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor involved in artificial intelligence research for the U.S. military. "'Westworld' is an HBO series that deals with the'big questions' of artificial intelligence (AI) in an undeniably vivid and timely way," said Selmer Bringsjord, director of the RPI Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning Lab. "The real world will ineluctably move toward giving experiences to humans in environments that are at once immersive and populated with sophisticated AIs and robots." Currently, Bringsjord is working on a multi-million dollar AI development project with support from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, which wants to advance military robotics for logistics and other missions. His work focuses on how to program a form of moral sense into AI, so that a robot not under continuous human control can make appropriate choices -- such as not harming innocent humans or causing unnecessary damage -- when faced with unexpected circumstances.