You are waiting for more borg and romulans? Are you interested in a new enemy of the federation to appear or have another re-encounter like the cardassians?
this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
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The Minds of the culture are people, with the same rights as any other inhabitant. Even the ones unwilling or unsuitable to coordinate the systems of a ship or orbital.
By contrast, both Data and the Doctor had to argue for their personhood, to convince the Federation that they should have rights, and their utility played a role in that decision.
The Federation talk a big game about fair treatment for all sentient beings, but they sure are willing to deny rights to those they don't like, and they are meat supremacists.
Sentient AIs seem to be a lot less common and less powerful computationally in Fed space than in the Culture.
Lore/Data/Lal, Moriarty, the Doctor and that's pretty much it.
V'Ger is earlier, but was overclocked by unknown alien technology, and therefore not replicable by the Feds.
Although a starship computer of the TNG era, i.e. the latter third of the 24th Century, has enough computing power to create a sentient AI, Moriarty, by what is essentially a mistake in Data's vibe coding, there seems to be some kind of brake to keep starship computers from becoming sentient themselves.
Culture AIs come in a huge range of capabilities from GSV commanding Minds to drones like Mawhrin-Skel with about the same level of intelligence as the biological citizens, to a sentient survival suit.
If you read closely, although the meatbag characters largely take center stage, it's the GSV Minds who directly control the vast majority of resources, come to consensus among themselves on strategy, or go loose cannon, or sulk in a corner, and everyone else is literally just along for the ride.
Are they really rare, or are we seeing a universe shaped by and through the eyes of a civilization predisposed to deny and destroy them? Apart from the Doctor and Moriarty, how many others were simply shut off? How many beings like the exocomps were wiped when they "malfunctioned"? How many sentient computers are locked away in the Daystrom Institute, never to see the light of day?