Raised By Wolves: Just How Sentient Are Mother And Father?

gamerant.com:

The question on everyone's mind whenever a new science fiction property introduces a human-like machine is often the same: exactly how human-like can they be? This is especially true when a piece of media makes it a point to place that question front and center in the audience's face for the entire runtime, as is the case in Ridley Scott's HBO series.

Raised by Wolves just concluded its second season, which is not hiding its titanic cliffhanger and desire for a third. The series has expanded and contracted, taking the domestic tale of babies and robotic parents to near planetary warfare and giant monster combat. Surprisingly, the aspect that never gets lost in the shuffle is the ongoing evolution of the series' main characters, the androids called Mother and Father.

Ridley Scott's Raised by Wolves Has Bladerunner Vibes

Sentience is one of those concepts that has a few different meanings, but the meaning most people understand is thanks to science fiction. The word generally refers the ability to feel and think for oneself with no particular implications, but in sci-fi, it refers to artificial intelligence's ability to experience human-like traits. These mainly include self-awareness, emotion, free will, and similar lofty concepts. Raised by Wolves starts with the premise of artificial beings being entrusted with the care of human children, programmed to protect them at all costs. They behave like parents, willingly sacrifice themselves for their wards, and even mourn when their children don't make it. Their ability to feel anything outside their programming, however, is questionable. This opens up the classic hole that this debate always tunnels into, whether human sentience is any different from artificial programming.

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