We love to joke that tools like ChatGPT toy with sentience and could turn on us in an Asimovian act of disloyalty. But the truth is, as Seldon clarifies, there's a long way between an adaptive algorithm that can "learn" and one that has a mind of its own.
In other sci-fi shows, a dig at A.I. might have less weight or different implications. Star Trek's Data, for instance, is a lovable android that just wants to be human. In Asimov's world, though, artificial intelligence isn't just present. It's a central theme. The author loved to wrestle with the concept of artificial intelligence, and his robot novels are filled with scenarios where humans encounter sentient robots and attempt to contain them within the famous Three Laws of Robotics, which roughly equate to: robots must protect humans first, obey humans second, and protect themselves third, in that order.
However, there is a conspicuous lack of positronic energy in the author's "Foundation" novels, which take place in the same universe roughly 20,000 years in the future. The Apple TV+ series has a little more robotic influence, primarily in the form of Demerzel (Laura Birn), the AI-powered assistant to the trio of cloned emperors guiding the galaxy. In Season 2, Episode 1, we are immediately reminded of Demerzel's synthetic makeup when an assassin chops off half of her head, only for the robot to keep on going without skipping a beat. Demerzel aside, though, there remains a stark absence of robots in "Foundation" — which, at first glance, is odd for an adaptation inspired by the pen of the very man who took that term mainstream in the mid-20th Century.
