Programming for sentience, also referred to as artificial sentience, permitted a droid the capacity to reason, experience emotions, and cherish its own existence. IG-88 received this specific type of programming, and he subsequently disseminated it to additional droids whom he enlisted into his army. The efforts of droid rights advocates to liberate droids from what they saw as "involuntary enslavement" stemmed from this programming, which represented the most advanced form of self-governance that a droid could achieve.