afab boyfriend @princessasterion.bsky.social
ME READING WARHAMMER 40K BOOKS IN 2018: this setting is so fucking dumb. No way a society would let their entire technological infrastructure be controlled by a handful of fanatics that have convinced themselves that computer code is literally God
ME NOW: Ah,
Except they don't use AI in WH40K. They use cloned human brains for anything that can't be achieved with basic electronics. I'm pretty sure the AdMech actually consider AI a form of heresy against the Machine God and the Omnissiah.
They do bionically enhance the human brain with Neuralink-style interfaces, and even go as far as entombing a person in a pod of brain fluid to augment their interface to one specific machine. But full on AI is not kosher AFAIK
afaik (i know very little) there is no canon explanation for what exactly a machine spirit is, so it could be old ai programs or somesuch.
The Machine Spirit is (mostly) an abstraction. The AdMech as a whole is a collection of tech support geeks whose documentation and manfiles were converted to hymns 10,000 years ago. Very few members actually have any significant understanding of what they're doing anymore. They just know that if they speak the Holy Words of System Reset and then poke the button with a circle on it, the machine spirit dies and resurrects anew.
So, mostly, no, AI has been well and truly eradicated in 40k and most of what is referred to as "Machine Spirit" is just semi-basic technology being crabby like it already does in the modern day. When a modern programmer says his system is "thinking" or is "upset" he doesn't mean it literally - AdMech just forgot that language wasn't literal.
That said, there are a few suspiciously intelligent and well-informed Machine Spirits in a few places. A couple of them can outright hold a conversation.
You should read up on the League of Votann.