Let's say that you, yes, you! Have been given the power to create life. Maybe you're an A.I. programmer who can do the shit that everyone wished to do. Maybe you're a golem crafter who's made the perfect companion doll aka Pygmalion. Maybe you're a spirit-crafter who's about to make his first familiar. Either way you have command over their traits. Size, speed, strength, appearance... and other things. There will be no childhood stage, simply a blink of an eye, and they exist. You can decide their personality. Their likes. Dislikes. What *they are*. So the question is this. Is this right? Or more accurately, if you were to program them to be loyal to you and love you, did you commit a horrible violation of free will, or were you just pragmatic? If you made an A.I. to be nice to humans, did you just violate its free will or just taken prudent steps to ensure humans aren't in danger? Slaver or creator?
Morality is relative, in my opinion. What is right is decided by society at large. So it all depends. I suppose in this case and based on our society's morality, if I did what you just said, creating life, then I am both good and bad. I think it might be hard to decide which one you are, impossible even. This might not be the answer you want.
This might be off-point, but if you actually "create" something, e.g. bring it into being from nothing, and as part of that creation you incorporate into it the performance of whatever behaviors or actions you choose, I don't think you can be said to "violate" that something's free will, since it never had free will to begin with.
This way you violate it's free will from the perspective of a human indeed, by taking prudent steps to ensure humans aren't in danger by them. One doesn't cancel the other out. Creator. If the being lacks general understanding and innate emotion of "freedom" or what human freedom means at least, then it can't be considered a slave. If it doesn't have the urge to rebel then it's not a slave. Either the creator installs a purpose in a being, or not, he's still a creator. Is it okay by you? I think you need to think more from the perspective of these beings you want to create in order to figure this out.
I'm working on something similar; don't steal my idea! Actually, it's just a subplot of a larger story, but still important. The questions you ask aren't entirely new and I'm sure have been explored in fiction already. Since there is no consensus on the answer, why not write a short story or even a novel that tries to answer those questions?
Chappie is a horribly flawed mess of a film, but it has moments of brilliance when it touches on this subject, parenting, and god(s).
Well, if you programmed them then they never really had any free will of their own. It's like the Sims from the, well, The Sims. Unless you deliberately allow them some measure of free will in the options, they'll literally just stand there and do nothing (in older games anyway) even to the point where they pee on the floor and pass out in the puddle out of exhaustion because their energy bar is too low. Now, the question we could ask is: if this creation soon became self-aware and demanded to be treated equally i.e. the Synths from Fallout 4.
As authors,we get to choose the universe our characters play in. I argue that the answer depends on your universe. As @Madman points out, your universe's society/societies would dictate its/their own moral code. The morals would be influenced by circumstances. Two extreme examples spring to mind. In a society that just came out of a costly war with AIs or another state that used to be a less developed vassal state, I would expect their morals to be against the creation of something with the potential to turn on the society that created it, or at least very conservative concerning the freedoms that such creations would be given. On the flip side, a society that has known peace for a long time, caught up in the nuances of freedom of thought and that only ever saw the benefits of these types of technologies, I would imagine they might find strictures put on to the creation as akin to slavery and appalled by that very notion. As with most things, the answer is complex. There is one clear answer, though. It is whatever you as an author make it within the context of your story. Isn't it great that we get to explore these universes and watch consequences of these moral dilemmas play out in the stories we create?
