Trope-a-Day: Sapient Ship

Sapient Ship: Well, while the sophont ship AIs are not actually bound to their ships (they’re regular infomorphs hired for the position, so the captain of CS Repropriator one day may be the admiral on board CS Sovereignty Emergent some years later, and the retiree drinking whisky in the flag officers’ club with a meat-hat on a couple of centuries down the line), there are an awful lot of digisapiences doing the job, yes.

This becomes universal for AKVs (“unmanned” space fighter/missiles) and other such drone-type vehicles, because, frankly, in a battlespace containing thousands or more of independent friendlies and hostiles, each accelerating and firing weapons in their own unique relativistic frames of reference, while blasting away at each other in the EM spectrum with infowar attacks… well, let’s just say that primate tree-swinging instincts don’t even begin to cover it.