I feel bad for the hosts because the show is obviously about emerging consciousness. It's going to happen, so all the abuses we're seeing the hosts currently experience are going to factor into how they feel once they become fully self aware.
Right now it's similar to watching a sleeping person being abused - yes, they are not aware of the abuse at this precise moment but they are going to be. And it actually makes it worse in a way. Because the human creators in the setting aren't considering the consequences of what they're doing - allowing proto-sentient life forms to be abused and mutilated.
The ethical questions involved are not at all dissimilar to dealing with subjects like the use and abuse of animals. Some people would claim to feel nothing at seeing an animal abused because it "isn't a person, just a biological machine". Except that's not really true, in the case of animals at least - humans are animals, simply with more complex neurological systems and greater awareness. It's a difference of degree, not kind.
Westworld seems to be headed in the direction of establishing a similar comparison between levels of consciousness even without biological similarity. The hosts aren't organic but they seem to already be more sophisticated mentally than most biological animals. The fact that they have been purposefully created by another species rather than naturally evolved may not matter measured against what they are. There are serious questions of human responsibility for what humans create being set up here.
