: FWIW Durandal says on Ex Cathedra that the Pfhor drones are remotely
: controlled by a central computer
I did think about that after I posted last night, and thought that having a central control computer doesn't rule out having organic brains handling the nitty-gritty on the far end.
We were able to program computers that could decide where a thing should do and what it should do, long before we were capable of programming computers to actually control all the fine motor details that would be necessary to do that in real life. E.g. it's much easier to program the AI that controls the actual drone NPCs in the Marathon games, than it would be to program an AI to control a real drone that behaves the same way.
So basically, Pfhor "AI" could just be a program to assign orders to the rank and file so as to best accomplish the end-goals decided by senior staff, and reprogramming the Drones would just mean making that central computer give them different orders.
: the main function they perform (fly
: around and shoot things) appears simple enough that it shouldn't require
: an on-board brain. This degree of automation is already feasible with real
: world technology, despite us being far from attaining general purpose AI.
: The Pfhor, who benefited from piggybacking off the work of more advanced
: predecessors, should be able to manage at least that much.
You would think so, but then if they could do that, why would they use slaves? From an in-universe perspective, not a narrative one.
