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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8829364" data-attributes="member: 4937">I have always felt Star Wars treatment of artificial intelligences is one of the best things about it.Artificial intelligences defy current human experience because the only intelligent and sentient beings we are familiar with at present is us.  Humans therefore tend to respond to robots in one of two equally bad ways.  Either they assert that they are human, and therefore want to treat them according to human rights and dignities.  Or else they assert that they are objects and want to treat them as objects with the rights and dignities of an object.  But AI's would be neither, and either one is a dysfunctional category failure akin to the well-meaning Hermione Granger attempting to trick Hogwarts house elves into receiving clothing in the wrong-headed and condescending effort to "set them free".  Granger is operating from the theory that the best way to relate to a non-human intelligence is to assume its wants, desires, dignities, and so forth are exactly what a human would desire where a human to find itself in the same circumstances.  This is a failure of imagination, or as in Hermione's case, a failure of empathy by our favorite semi-autistic nerd girl.  Star Wars has always charted what I think is the correct middle way of seeing them as some entirely different class of being with its own set of rights and dignities that good people will recognize and respect, but at the same time not human and not trying to impose on them unwanted humanity.  It's a fundamental human arrogance to suppose both that everything else wants to be human, and that what humans want is in fact the right and noble way to live.</blockquote>

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