I think it might be, there’s no way Anakin would be able to buy proprietary hardware or software. So either he stole it, which his mother probably would not have allowed. Or he was able to scrap all the parts together because there is a template for humanoid protocol droids that we have also seen round Star Wars. And then the software itself either Anakin programed entirely himself, (which I know he’s very smart, but even that seems a stretch) or he forked it. So it would make more sense that there was an open source catalog of protocol droid software. It also would make more sense due to the fact that a lot of people have droids, but they are not all created equal. I would think many of the droids on Coruscant were proprietary, while many of the droids in the outer rim are open source.
It seems shortsighted of science fiction authors to have not predicted the problems we’re currently having with AI. They had decades to think about it. Did any of them predict that people would be using it to cheat on homework, create scams, disrupt social media with spam and terribly off-putting fake images, publish books and songs nobody wrote and nobody wants, all while using obscene amounts of energy? The world doesn’t seem more futuristic or in any danger of getting wiped out by some autonomous AI thing that’s been given access to nukes, both typical major themes. The world to me just feels more empty and boring. It’s just a new tool hucksters can use to defraud people.
Some of the other things the tech oligarchs are pursuing are also cliche themes of science fiction: space exploration, the metaverse, the meta glasses, Musk’s Neuralink. So if AI did not turn out as expected, how’s the rest of this stuff gonna work out?
Actually, they did predict this. It’s been one of the classic ethical questions posed by hard sci-fi since we were feeding punch-cards into slots and soldering breadboards.
Isaac Asimov in particular wrote a lot of short stories tackling the ways that an AI could break the Laws of Robotics. Hell, he invented the Laws of Robotics specifically as a plot device for his setting to discuss the philosophy behind computer ethics.
The problem is, the tech oligarchs failed the reading assignment and didn’t actually read the books that were supposed to warn them NOT to do the thing.