Spoilers Star Wars: Andor season 2

Zardnaar said:

It's really only the side kick droids that are the exceptions. And the Solo movie one. That's maybe 5 droids of which 3 are astromechs. And C3-PO it's dubious if he has true free will. And it's not always clear the rest have free will.

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LOL come on.

Think about it. You basically just said:

"Only the droids that get significant screen time seem to have free will".

The same thing applies to the human characters - only the ones with significant screen time can we see the decision-making the shows free will! I don't agree it's dubious with C3PO at all. He talks about his "programming" in the same way someone talks about their strong religious beliefs or specific upbringing and values or whatever - if anything he's just recognising that he didn't have an upbringing, but rather was given a pre-set load of values - but values it seems like he can now deviate from just as a human can deviate from values instilled in them. If sentient/sapient droids were controlled by programming any more than humans are trained by upbringing, conditioning, and so on, they wouldn't even need restraining bolts and so on, they could just reprogram them.

Paul Farquhar said:

In other words, you hate the idea that the good guys in Star Wars are slave owners and will twist the available data in any way you can to make it not so.

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Not really we don't have any data to go with in Disney era.

Legends did go there to some extent. There was a droids right movement and independent droids and two droid species. The smarter ones could eventually break their programming and become self aware.

Disney hasn't gone there that much. If they have let me know.

If a droid can't make independent decisions it's a clever machine beholden to it's programming. Hence my voting comparison. A talking forklift is still a forklift.

If we had more advance AI irl would you let droids vote if they could be programmed to always vote for whoever opposed to your PoV?

trappedslider said:

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I can so relate to Denise's "downturny mouth". I have that too. (I'm a jaw clencher, and people often think I look angry when I'm not.)

Zardnaar said:

If we had more advance AI irl would you let droids vote if they could be programmed to always vote for whoever opposed to your PoV?

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Bro you keep saying stuff like this, without even apparently thinking about how by the time with have AI that's actually sentient and sapient (LLMs are neither), we'll probably have tech where you can program humans to vote a specific way. At that point what's even the difference?

Ruin Explorer said:

Bro you keep saying stuff like this, without even apparently thinking about how by the time with have AI that's actually sentient and sapient (LLMs are neither), we'll probably have tech where you can program humans to vote a specific way. At that point what's even the difference?

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Because that's my PoV/criteria.

If an AI lacks free will it's debatable how sentient they are vs clever machine.

Applies to other franchises. Skynet gas free will the average terminator doesn't.

If an AI can be programmed to always vote XYZ they can be programmed to kill or whatever.

Zardnaar said:

Skynet gas free will the average terminator doesn't.

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What is the 'average' terminator? It appears that the terminator sent back was reprogrammed (similar to Andor) and then developed. Doesn't that mean that all of them have that capability- just have it not directed towards the human species? After all, just a skin wouldn't be enough to infiltrate...

Star Wars is interesting in giving a spectrum of issues on free will. In addition to the droids there is the issue of the clones and what was done to them with genetic modification, fast growth, indoctrination/training, and the brain chips that allowed order 66. Then you have actual slaves and the prison compliance methods shown in Andor as well as the efforts of the Empire to assert control and even the rebellion in trying to create some order and internal chain of command.

What was done to the clones is pretty horrific the more you get into it.

"We modified their genetic structure to make them less independent than the original host. They are totally obedient, taking any order without question."
―Lama Su, to Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi in Attack of the Clones.

chuckdee said:

What is the 'average' terminator? It appears that the terminator sent back was reprogrammed (similar to Andor) and then developed. Doesn't that mean that all of them have that capability- just have it not directed towards the human species? After all, just a skin wouldn't be enough to infiltrate...

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I think skynet limits their independence and the reprogrammed ones are still compelled to follow orders.