“In Star Wars, the Rebellion had all of these beautiful hyperspace-capable starfighters that could shoot laser beams and explore galaxies – and they still had human pilots”—except that, unless the pilot is a Jedi or Bith or something like, most of the work is done by astrodroids like R2 and pilots are something of a general controller/safety measure.
It can and usually does. Note that we do see some scenes where a pilot leaves the ship and it, seemingly by itself, flies away to park or something (for instance, R4 does it in Episode III to Obi-Wan’s ship IIRC). It might actually be a funny story of each side using organic pilots because the other side uses human pilots and astrodroids are not that good in predicting organics’ behavior, so it is just a Pareto equilibrium.
Yes, there probably is an in-universe explanation for why organic pilots are necessary. I think droids were shown to be worse fighters than clones (too slow/stupid ?) in the Prequels.
However, the implied prediction that FTL travel will be discovered before AI pilots superior to humans still seems unlikely.
Well, it were specifically B1 mass production droids which were made incredibly cheap and so with, let’s say, not the best AI ever. A rare model like HK-47 was superior to usual (neither Force-amplified nor decades-of-training-behind-Mandalore) humans; and the latter case could also be a difference in available weaponry (if your weapon cannot penetrate amplified beskar armor and you only find this out in the moment of attack, you’d need to be very smart to immediately find a way to win or retreat before the Battle Reflexes guy shuts you off).
As for FTL—I wouldn’t be so sure, history of research sometimes makes strange jumps. Romans were this close to going all steampunk, and a naive modern observer could say “having steam machines without gunpowder seems unlikely”. Currently we don’t know what, if anything, could provide FTL, and the solution could jump on us unexpectedly and unrelatedly to AI development.
“In Star Wars, the Rebellion had all of these beautiful hyperspace-capable starfighters that could shoot laser beams and explore galaxies – and they still had human pilots”—except that, unless the pilot is a Jedi or Bith or something like, most of the work is done by astrodroids like R2 and pilots are something of a general controller/safety measure.
Limited field of view and slow decision making, reliant on multiple complex systems for life support.
If a droid or a computer could fly an X-wing, it should.
It can and usually does. Note that we do see some scenes where a pilot leaves the ship and it, seemingly by itself, flies away to park or something (for instance, R4 does it in Episode III to Obi-Wan’s ship IIRC). It might actually be a funny story of each side using organic pilots because the other side uses human pilots and astrodroids are not that good in predicting organics’ behavior, so it is just a Pareto equilibrium.
Yes, there probably is an in-universe explanation for why organic pilots are necessary. I think droids were shown to be worse fighters than clones (too slow/stupid ?) in the Prequels.
However, the implied prediction that FTL travel will be discovered before AI pilots superior to humans still seems unlikely.
Well, it were specifically B1 mass production droids which were made incredibly cheap and so with, let’s say, not the best AI ever. A rare model like HK-47 was superior to usual (neither Force-amplified nor decades-of-training-behind-Mandalore) humans; and the latter case could also be a difference in available weaponry (if your weapon cannot penetrate amplified beskar armor and you only find this out in the moment of attack, you’d need to be very smart to immediately find a way to win or retreat before the Battle Reflexes guy shuts you off).
As for FTL—I wouldn’t be so sure, history of research sometimes makes strange jumps. Romans were this close to going all steampunk, and a naive modern observer could say “having steam machines without gunpowder seems unlikely”. Currently we don’t know what, if anything, could provide FTL, and the solution could jump on us unexpectedly and unrelatedly to AI development.