If there was just one thing that freaked you out in all of Season 4 of “Black Mirror” it was probably the horrifying robotic “dogs” that hunted down humans living in a futuristic wasteland in “Metalhead.”
Now you have reason to be afraid of such tech in real life. The android creatures that the fictional attack animals are based on can now open unlocked doors.
Boston Dynamics’ SpotMini robodog has gone from being able to help load a dishwasher to figuring out how to exit a room. Yes, this isn’t quiet as big a threat as the dogs in Metalhead, who tracked Bella (Maxine Peake) in a very intense all-black-and-white episode of Charlie Brooker’s tech-obsessed anthology series. But it’s still pretty freaky.
Brooker plays on our fears about where tech can take us if we let it get out of hand, and seeing as the clips showing off the robodogs’ mad skills were what sparked his idea for “Metalhead,” well we just hope they don’t figure out how to unlock doors.
“I wanted to do a story where there was almost no dialogue,” Brooker told Entertainment Weekly in December. “And with those videos, there’s something very creepy watching them where they get knocked over, and they look sort of pathetic laying there, but then they slowly manage to get back up.”
Watch the video of the robodogs newfound skill above. And, uh, best of luck to you after the collapse of human society.