Star Wars and Artificial Intelligence

Star Wars. The light side vs. the dark side of the Force. It tells a classic story of good versus evil. Both sides are a good example of perfect harmony between humans and machines.

Artificial intelligence is omnipresent in the Star Wars universe. A wide range of droids help their humanoid counterparts in medicine, communications, teaching, engineering, military and even bartending, among many other areas.

The depiction of artificial intelligence from the original trilogy in 1977, serves as a model for today's science.

The two most famous droids, C-3PO and R2D2, accompany the story with constant bickering and friendship.?

But what exactly sets these two apart?

R2D2 - an Astromech Droid

He is the Jack of all Trades. For ship repair, calculating hyperspace routes or other technical challenges, the little all-around helper is well equipped. Mobility is its greatest ally.?

In real life, too, we see robots and machines that can handle numerous tasks all by themselves. But there is still plenty of room for improvement.

C-3PO - a Protocol Droid

Unlike other droids that do "hard" work, the protocol droid is designed to assist its humanoid counterpart in communication.?

Translation, transcription, information and teaching are among his main tasks. He is proficient in most languages and forms of communication and is able to think and speak like a human.?

He often serves as an interpreter between other life forms or even machines. For example, in one scene he tells Han Solo about the current "emotional state" of the Millennium Falcon so that a broken part of the ship can be quickly located. Or, to keep it simple, he serves as a steady translator of R2D2's bleeping sounds.

You can roughly compare it to a chatbot or personal voice assistant like Siri to make the connection to reality.

Unfortunately, we don't have these impressive companions yet, however, we already have robots and AI systems that make our daily lives significantly easier.

Machine learning needs human input to be continuously developed. Keyword: Human-in-the-loop.

Artificial intelligence is no longer science fiction but reality.

-RK-