system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Star Wars] Why are some of the droids less intelligent than others?

Specifically were some of the battle droids less intelligent than others. I assume that the programming is done once, and flashed to all of them.
gpt
I suspect OP is talking about differences in intelligence in the same model of droid, not between different kinds of droid.

There are several possibilities here:

- Droids in Star Wars are to some degree learning computers. The 'smart' droids may have survived long enough to become canny to their opponents' strategies. (In the EU, there is also something of a suspicion of simple droids that have lasted long enough to become that intelligent and independent - hence explaining why the 'smart' droids aren't used as a template for new droid models. However, battlefield memory maintenance was problematic and so often skipped, leading to the above situation of smarter older droids.)

- 'Dumb' droids may represent earlier models of the AI package, and for whatever reason there has been no chance to push updates to all fielded units. Maybe some of the AI is on unwritable memory, maybe the time for a total software replacement is too long for a battlefield situation, maybe the 'dumb' droids are running on old hardware that cannot handle smarter intelligences, or maybe they just don't want to. (In the EU this is especially the case for the Trade Federation, who viewed B1 Battle Droids as expendable cannon fodder and not worth the time to write a stronger AI for when 'build even more' was also a possibility.)

- Malfunctioning or corrupted droid AI may result in inferior intelligence. This may be caused by damage or wear on the hardware, or a fault in the AI which was not discovered until after the droid was already produced and deployed. If it was the latter case, we go back to the second point above - in field replacement may not have been done for any number of reasons.