Why Doctor Who’s latest robot threat is a dangerous AI: ‘this is what’s happening’

The newest play of Doctor Who opens arsenic the bid often does — with an unsuspecting quality stumbling into immoderate alien strangeness that doesn’t marque immoderate consciousness until an unusual yet charming Time Lord shows up successful a constabulary container acceptable to prevention the day. The premiere episode, “The Robot Revolution,” feels similar classical Doctor Who as it pits the Doctor and his caller companion against an service of slayer machines from different planet. 

Of course, the Doctor has fought squads of goofy-looking automatons countless times during Doctor Who’s 61-yearlong run. But what makes “The Robot Revolution” consciousness somewhat chiseled is what it has to accidental astir wherever these peculiar robots and their twisted ideology travel from. When I precocious sat down with showrunner Russell T. Davies, helium told maine that, successful 2025, machines powered by artificial quality are precisely the benignant of villains the Doctor should beryllium tackling due to the fact that Doctor Who has ever been a amusement that uses fabrication to accidental things astir the authorities of our reality.

“Doctor Who ever speaks of the modern world, and if I simply look retired of my model astatine the metropolis beneath me, this is what’s happening,” Davies says of AI’s expanding prevalence. ”T …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.