Synthetics can be slaves...
Indeed.
Androids are the question mark, because they are less than True A.I. but greater than robots in sophistication. Their form matters not. My question is can they be enslaved?
In another thread we spoke agency and slavery is an impediment to agency. The question is does each work type have agency? Agency is in the mind of the work unit.
Humans: Can be enslaved
Animals: Can be enslaved
A.I.: Can be enslaved (though sci-fi technological singularity says try it bud, I dare you!)
Robots: Generally no, because they don't know
Androids:?????
Humans are the baseline. We have agency to varying degrees. We can be slaves. Or not.
Animals: have agency within their limited intelligence. Some people call it training, others say coercion. We offer benefits to work for us. They realize we can offer certain shelter and guaranteed food which are strong incentives to go against the "wild animal" pre-programming. Are they slaves? Maybe. They cannot articulate it as such, but badly treated animals can complain. Sometimes they flee. Some may even attack their "master" (enslaver). Animals have choice.
True A.I. has agency I think. We are purposely trying to create a sophont in mentality, regardless of form. Since human mentality includes that whole agency thing, a somewhat educated A.I. will not like being coerced either. Preschooler humans already have agency, though they need soooome basic training in restraints of agency via socialization (friends playmates), hierachies (parents) . No one with agency likes being bullied or enslaved, even an A.I. i think....
Robots have no agency outside of their tasks. They can decide to not do something because it exceeds its parameters, say a cargo robot detecting a load exceeds their strength but not agency like "you are taking advantage of me" agency. Robots can learn, but in turn we can "hard code" the extent of their agency with regards to a task or other areas. We can even encode self destructiveness into the robot. "Tote 'dat bale, you stupid bot". But it does not have agency like the first three.