I’d say CP30 and R2D2 are certainly sentient (they are conscious and perceive experiences) and probably sapient (since they reason and appear to possess self-consciousness). But, since they are not “lifeforms” as the term is commonly applied (i.e. organic), then they can’t really be considered “alive” and it follows that they don’t have a “life-force” (whatever that is).
But, that shouldn’t be the criteria used for evaluating or judging advanced AI (which, of course is still hypothetical).
Terms like “life-form”, “alive” and “life-force” should not be used with AI. Even “sapience” is kind of a muddy term with AI, depending on how broad your definition is. If it’s simply being wise and able to reason, then yes, I’d say CP30 and R2D2 and all the other Star Wars droids are sapient. But, if you include the “homo sapient” (the ability to think and reason like a human) part into the definition, then all bets are off. The droids may be conscious, self-conscious and think and reason every bit as well (or better) as humans, but they may do so via an entirely different, non-human pathway.
I think the only important questions to ask with regard to AI being “alive” is, “is it sentient and is it self conscious?”
Who knows, we may need to create new terms to describe the minds of super-brainy creatures (organic, or artificial) that are probably on their way to Earth right now with their anal probes. If you think of self-consciousness as being an overseeing layer on top of consciousness, what if these creatures have a layer or two on top of that? We need words for those states!
“Terms like “life-form”, “alive” and “life-force” should not be used with AI”
Haven’t we successfully argued that Data was alive? Was it dependent on the fact he can be possessed by life-forms shoving his sentience to a side while they possess him? Cause if it is…yeah…I can see that.
I would say the answer to this question is Yes, regardless of the issue of “life-force”. There’s clearly a difference between all droids and, say, a landspeeder or an AT-ST. I
d call it “self-motivation”
I’ll take “Examples of Lucasfilm Screwing With Its Own Canon” for $500, Alex.
In all seriousness, I loathed the Yuuzhan Vong, specifically because they came across exactly as being a foe that was custom-built to specifically be immune to everything that the Jedi / Republic could do.
Also (and I didn’t know this until now, because I gave up on reading those books), apparently, the Yuuzhan Vong had, in fact, originally been connected to the Force, and their homeworld (which was, itself, a living being) severed the race’s connection to the Force at some point.
Too late to add: Meetra Surik, as well, was an example of a person (in this case, a Jedi) whose connection to the Force was severed.
Regardless, the point is, I suppose, that they aren’t examples of life forms which came into being with no connection to the Force at all, but of beings whose connection to the Force was intentionally cut off.
I thought the point was “living creatures are living creatures because they generate the Force” (note present tense) - are Meetra and the Yuuzhan Vong no longer living creatures?
ETA: I loathed the Yuuzhan Vong for exactly the same reason. It was like when kids play - “I have a shield that’s immune to bullets” “Well, I have a laser that cuts through bulletproof shields” “Yeah? Well my dog eats lasers” “Oh, yeah? My dog-chopping sword…”
One of my favorite scenes in the original Star Wars is when Luke is in his X-Wing at the base with ground crewmen running all around preparing the fighters for takeoff, and one of the crewmen idly notes, “your R2 unit looks a little rusty, want me to replace it?” Luke without missing a beat goes, “NOT A CHANCE!” That exchange would seem to demonstrate that most people in the universe of that story do view droids as being interchangable and soulless mechanical components. But obviously we as viewers are meant to think otherwise: after everything Luke and R2 had been together, the notion of him just being discarded like garbage was clearly not an option.
But this by no means answers the OP’s question. Indeed, it raises another one: Luke clearly felt a bond with R2, but was this reciprocated? Was R2 actually FEELING anything towards Luke, or was he merely responding in a favorable way to Luke and demonstrating endearing behavior because he was programmed to do this for whatever owner fulfilled his necessary maintenance requirements?
If he was just acting as programmed, why would he refuse to show Luke the whole clip back at the farm on Tatooine? Luke is his owner at that point.
And if droids can’t feel, what is the point of torturing them, as seen in Jedi? And if they weren’t free-willed, how could they “learn some respect” if they were, say, particularly feisty? They could surely just be reprogrammed.
Was that not the point of that scene though? That’s how I always interpreted it, at least once I was old enough to understand segregation, etc… (as a 4/5 year old, it wasn’t on my radar in 1977)
Absolutely. In fact, Alan Dean Foster’s novelization (which I read multiple times back in the day, until it literally fell apart), even said something like, “Luke was a bit uncomfortable asking Threepio to wait outside, but he realized this wasn’t the best time or place to take a stand for droid rights.” That scene was surely supposed to resonate with the audience.
That’s an interesting question, and I don’t know that there’s a canonical answer. I hypothesize that, since it’s described that both the Yuuzhan Vong and Meetra had their connections to the Force “severed,” it isn’t that their bodies stopped generating the energy field that is the Force, it’s that, through some mechanism, the energy which they created was no longer attached to the broader Force.
Imperfect analogy follows: think of each living creature as an electrical generator, and the Force as the electrical grid. If my hypothesis isn’t completely full of pudu, it’s not that these “generators” stopped functioning, it’s that they were no longer connected to the grid.
It’s not unthinkable to have a robot brain that’s too complicated to efficiently or accurately reprogram manually, and so just using stimulus like triggering its “pain receptors” could be a way to get a desired result for the same reason it would work on a person. If it’s programmed to emulate the thought process of a living being, it would have at least some of the same responses without NECESSARILY needing to BE a living being.
That said, I think the evidence suggests that droids ARE effectively persons / “alive” in all meaningful senses except the biological and Force-imbued ones.
I’m the OP, and I don’t really feel the need to clarify my question (clumsily worded as it may have been), as I’m enjoying the discussion.
Maybe I’ll just add one thought. As ubiquitous as droids are in the SW-verse, perhaps the closest analogy we have in current real life is cell phones. If my phone were to get destroyed, I’d be pissed, yeah, but I wouldn’t mourn as if a person or a pet had died. I’d just get a new phone, and I can replicate everything that made the old one “my phone” into the new one. Apparently, you can’t do anything like that with droids, which is what I find curious.
I’m not sure that that’s actually true, as, apart from the corner-case of L3-37, I’m not aware of any examples in primary SW canon* of either (a) a droid owner successfully transferring their droid’s “personality” to a new body, or (b) a droid owner wishing to do so, only to learn that it’s not possible.
In other words, it’s not at all clear from canon that “you can’t do anything like that with droids,” because (AFAIK) it’s not ever been established that it’s not possible (and nor has it been established that it is possible). And, if it is possible, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a “life force” in a droid, so much as a “personality matrix” that might be salvaged and placed into a new chassis.
*- I make that caveat because there’s an awful lot of “expanded universe” canon out there (from books, comics, video games, RPGs, etc.), the vast majority of which was rendered non-canon by Disney when they bought Lucasfilm.
Again I turn to C-3PO as an example–Baby Darth “built” him, but that has to mean that he dug up various bits of scrap from the junkyard and reassembled them into a working droid (unless we are supposed to believe that Annie knew more than 6 million forms of communication) so he must have found a protocol droid CPU/personality/database module that he plugged into the hardware.
