What Star Wars got wrong about AI (so far)

Two generations learned what a thinking machine looks like from a production line of individuals and the picture is not holding. AI assisted. The saga imagined thinking machines as immortal individuals in metal bodies. Real AI showed up as copyable software, and every difference is worth understanding. We grew up with the droids. R2-D2 beeping through a firefight, C-3PO fretting about the odds of…