Artificial intelligence

Covenant
Forerunner relics are created with a purpose. Forerunner Oracles were created with purpose and free will. Though their actions are constrained by protocols, their free will can override these protocols, or they could fall prey to arrogance or the ravages of time.

Those oracles that retain their sanity and keep to their duty are often sharply limited in what they know. The Forerunner do not build useless things, and there is no use in filling an Oracle with data beyond its limited domain. This is why Oracles are ignorant of basic facts about Forerunner society and the Great Journey.

Therefore, the intellectual class of the Holy Ecumene, from historians to theologians to lay scholars, have long since accepted the fact that Oracles are valuable sources that can never quite be trusted. They are to be questioned and then left alone.

They’ve been rather more reluctant to accept the fact that there is nothing they can do to stop the rest of the Covenant from worshipping Oracles as a mouthpiece of the gods.

On the subject of creating artificial intelligences, Covenant doctrine is quite simple: Don’t. The reasoning is also quite simple: The Forerunner failed to create loyal AI. They created Mendicant Bias, and it led to their downfall. For the Covenant to create artificial minds and expect a better outcome would be the height of arrogance. Artificial minds are wiser and more powerful than natural minds, and therefore the damage that a rogue AI (Or, gods forbid, a cabal of them) could do to the Holy Ecumene is incalculable.

There is also the unspoken argument that the Prophets’ and the Elites’ claim to rule often rests on the argument that they are born to lead, and more suited to the role of leadership than the other species of the Holy Ecumene. If a mind more capable than them was created, they would be supplanted. Nobody likes the idea of being replaced, and the subjects are actually quite happy to serve the devil they know over the devil they don’t.

Experiments into artificial intelligence continue in the dark corners of the Holy Ecumene. Ministries and wealthy Elite clans dabble in the subject, and the Jackals have experimented with AIs since before First Contact. But these projects are forbidden and punishable by death. Many of the Covenant would be almost as horrified by the UNSC’s liberal use of smart AI as they would be by wholesale enslavement of Oracles.

As for Covenant counterparts to dumb AI, they exist, but their design and use is strictly regulated. They are tools for sifting data and encrypting documents. In the hands of criminal syndicates, they are tools for forging documents. The latter is so ubiquitous that video and audio evidence has a high chain-of-custody barrier to clear before it is admissible in court.