AI, whether it be official or unofficial, what do people typically expect from them? When you prepare for an RP encounter with one, what are you expecting to happen?
P.S,
What's the community's definition of original AI role play anyway?
There seem to be no defined role for AI around, at least nowadays. Lack of coherence makes a problem there, in my personal opinion. It results in different players picking from existing roles that are familiar to them (like say a zoner, junker, etc) and then trying to stylize that role into some machine-generated stuff, but this diversity might be all for naught given that I think people wouldn't bother much to differentiate from all that variety. May be this 'undefined' state appeals to some with this sort of free card to try at anything and no specific background boundaries, I don't know.
On my nomad characters I expect absolutely nothing at all. It's completely random and highly unlikely I would memorize each one individual RP approach to playing AI characters. Although for other reasons I'd rather kill it quickly before it decides to become an issue in a fight or a conversation with someone else. Now that I think about it - it's actually true for my human characters as well. Ironic, considering I typically keep these characters approaches worlds apart.
I expect the machine to fulfill its function which, in theory, should be more than the above-cited cases of "pewpew". Lost exploration drones are always interesting.
Also: Treewyrm - you're back? And alive? Cheers! Welcome back! Though you've probably been returned longer than I.
It's precisely that people don't know WHAT to expect that puts AI players in a predicament.
The problem is that when we see an AI flying around, we're generally not sure whether or not they're players that just want to go around getting kills with their rather nice(ly broken) cruisers or if they want to do something different.
Machine: Analizing... founding (put the faction of your ship here)... analizing... not a threat
You: talking to the machine, I don't know, asking for his possible killings in the Omicrons, or asking about anything else
Machine: Detecting whatever... updating database...
And that's all. No matter if the AI has a faction tag (I mean [AI]) or not.
I wish the players who "wear" an AI ID understand that "AI" means intelligence, not Siri. They can talk (they are intelligent machines, not followers of a program like a normal computer), they can do a lot of "normal" things without loss their "artificial" facet.
Man... even HAL9000 (yeah, from the movie, a computer in the beginning of the real AI) has more conversation than this guys.