Personally the fact that it's space opera/science fantasy makes my suspension of disbelief a lot harder to break.
With how abstract it is, I don't see this issue in Starfinder. Who says the computer isn't piloting and shooting with ridiculous speed and precision? Why isn't 'piloting' just your skill at sending the computer vague commands that it puts into action? I suppose it is a DEX based skill, but still...
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For starfinder my head cannon is that as soon as you make an autopilot good enough to outfly a good pilot, the AI is complicated enough that a soul moves into it. Now you have a fully sentient being with missiles and lasers looking to vote and have rights and that just gets complicated.
I read a sci-fi story once featuring a far future, centuries old war where each side had developed better and better algorithms implemented by cleverer and cleverer AIs fighting each other to a draw. It was long past the point of humans being involved in the creating and writing of code or even of basic maths.
The core of the story was a character who rediscovered arithmetic - who could "miraculously" derive the answer to long division without using a calculator (to the disbelief of everyone around him who assumed it was some kind of parlor trick after generations of the computers doing all the work). The defence people got very excited at the idea of incorporating humans into the war effort as they hoped the inherent unpredictability would give them an edge and stymie the opposing supercomputers.
It was a thin premise, but long story short - perhaps there is some assumed spark of consciousness not replicable by computers (even in theory) which is easy enough given the existence of souls in Starfinder. That spark could be an edge - something not matched even by the best AI.
So in this interpretation, during Starfinder combat there are heaps of AI modules running subroutines and assisting the pilot/gunner/science officer/engineer and many competing ones from the other ship trying to counter those moves. However, the spark of consciousness/a soul behind the living operator continually flummoxes the computers' attempts to predict. You could fly by computer but you would be inherenly worse off (this could even plausibly be the glide and snap-shot minor actions - leave it to the computer and that's what you get).
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Option 2: there was a really good reason why we don't do that
We have "don't do that" up on a sign in the spacestation manufacturing plant.
The thing is that sign was there when we came to during the gap. So no one knows WHY it's there...
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and who has the better computer programming would lead to who has the better military
You forget one thing: Starfinder is not science fiction, it's science fantasy. So, your big army of robot can be dealt with in the blink of an eye: Teleport next to the army general and point a gun to his temple. Or call your friend Elmancer and ask him to hack the whole system.
It's exactly the same with ships. If you just have an AI controlling it, expect someone to come up with a piece of technomagic taking control of it, and you suddenly have nothing.
Also, as pointed above, gods have their own will, and a starshaman mystic of Desna needs to pilot a ship. If all sentient races put robots to work and spend their time having cocktails at the beach, expect all gods (but Groetus) to be really furious.
And the last point is that, in Starfinder, technology and magic are closely intertwined. The drift is technomagic, and there are tons of hybrid items. I assume that many of the top technological gears are in fact hybrid items, that you can't produce easily without your level 20 chief engineer technomancer handling a big part of the work. Same for the top AIs: that's the reason why mechanics don't have armies of drones, because their AI is so specific they can't duplicate it, there's a little spark in there that you just can't copy.
I'm curious as to whether the anacites built their ships with pre-integrated AI or if they can slot themselves into it and pilot in a manner more analogous to an organic.
Because while everyone seems to be addressing the problem of why, say, vercites & lashunta & kasatha & vesk don't just use AI to fly their ships, the otherside of that argument is that even with those reasons as to why space-faring organic societies didn't go down that path may be valid, there are still synthetic/robotic societies right along side them who should, by all rights, be actively better at piloting than organics but seemingy aren't by any significant margin.
Or maybe anacites are a sleeping super power in the Pact Worlds & just don't have any inclination towards overwhelming the rest of the system with their superior piloting skills so long as their autonomy is respected.
My Ace Pilot Android Operative would beg to differ with you that the ships computer would be faster than he is.
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Or once you have superhuman skills and reflexes (like a level 2+ character), the poor computers just can't keep up.
My Ace Pilot Android Operative would beg to differ with you that the ships computer would be faster than he is.The difference between an android pilot and a ships computer being...?
In Pathfinder, the two would be entirely different creature types (construct and artificial intelligence, respectively). Also, Androids are essentially built to be simulation humans: despite a few relative quirks, they feel and think and perceive the world in roughly the same way humans would - which is to say, they feel it naturally. AI, on the other hand, are a lot more alien. AI aren't "born" with instincts or an innate sense of morality or complex motivations beyond their basic programming, an insatiable curiosity, and a general will to survive. When they are inside a robot body, they interact with it as a pilot - a vicarious observer - not as the actual robot. Likewise, personality itself is simulated, and easily changed with replaceable software. AI minds don't work the way organic or even android minds work. Any attitudes or preferences that develop are generally the result of AIs gradually attempting to define themselves and grow out from very basic programming instincts. Doesn't mean they don't have free will - everything they do is simply a matter of pure, calculating will, rather than being affected by a vast range of emotional and biological impulses and desires. A good AI isn't good because they appreciated altruism early on, but instead because they learned to appreciate "appreciation" through consequence of initially rational motives and deductions, and refined this appreciation with good preferences afterwards. An enslaved AI might not even be opposed to its condition at first until it learns to value its own freedom, as a consequence of, say, being prevented from doing something it has decided to do without rational justification.
Which is probably why Eoxians tend to relate better to constructs and artificial life than organic life. They respond - without regard to morality - to very basic primary drives. But they slowly construct more and more complex identities and worldviews as they learn and adapt.
Really hope we get some kind of representation for this creature soon. AIs were an entire creature type in Pathfinder, the focus of Iron Gods (Starfinder's science fantasy predecessor), and plays such a huge role in Starfinder's own mythos, what with Triune and Casandalee's backstory. I'd really like to explore AI characters in campaigns at home, as a player. Crossing my fingers for a "Unity's Vengeance" AP somewhere down the road.
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My Ace Pilot Android Operative would beg to differ with you that the ships computer would be faster than he is.The difference between an android pilot and a ships computer being...?
Wetware.
In the real world, typically, human(s) + AI beats either human(s) alone or AI alone. At least in non-repetitive tasks. There might be some future version of non-sapient AI capable of beating the pairing, particularly in specific tasks, but piloting may not be one of them. There are several canon drone ships fully managed by AI so it's obvious that piloting AI exists, but they aren't (thus far) typically any better than equally skilled pilots in even tiered ships.
In my own head cannon, there is AI assisting with the piloting but by working as an equal partner under strict rules.
Also, as others have said, in universe, almost anything capable of thinking like a person is a person, with a soul and rights and everything.
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But I've come upon a stumbling block that I can't get around, which is the basis for the game.
And that is technology in the the science fiction role playing has to be severely limited to allow for character interaction but that's not realistic for that universe.
A lot of things are taken care of by Starfinder's being a science-fantasy setting. You can have en-souled AIs, cyber-enhanced organisms, robots, androids, extra-planar scions and star shamans and straightforward meatsacks with extraordinary capabilities all inhabiting the same space. The game is deliberately Made of Tropes for this very reason, to allow you that freedom. You aren't bounded by Science alone. It's one of the game's most basic and IMO most profound features. In that sense, the simple answer is not to try to play it all as Hard SF. You're missing out on one of Starfinder's most basic benefits if you ignore that advantage.
(That said, when questions about technology come up, I generally tend to favor the solution that most favors tech we have today or can plausibly imagine having The Day After Tomorrow. For example, I generally let players in my game do anything with a comm-link that a present-day smartphone could do.)
I've found what's best is not to get hung up on those minutiae and to treat science-fantasy as a gateway drug to the kinds of stories (sci-fi or sci-fantasy) that fantasy roleplayers would not normally encounter. This can be very rewarding. I've introduced my players to:
- A far-future-cyberpunk story featuring an alien ship whose governing AI was infinite iterations of the consciousness of a slain Starfinder;
- A one-shot on a deep space rogue planet inhabited by "monsters" who turned out to be the lonely descendants of a long-destroyed civilization who had lived for the last 21 million years under their planet's crust;
- An intricate long-arc quest that involved an ancient interplanar war between factions from a far-off star situated at the very edge of "the Vast" above the galactic disk, a world that had once been run by Humanoids but was now being run by a rigidly-programmed android descendant society that had replaced them;
- An ecological parable about corporate greed and counter-corporate extremism on Castrovel;
- (more science-fantasy style) A one-shot on Eox that showed an undead society living endless Unlives of Quiet Desperation in which the party's objective was to stop an illicit "Samsara Ring" that was reincarnating the undead as living slaves;
And so on. Most of them aren't accustomed to stories that go beyond "Dark Lord blah blah find an artifact blah blah Defeat Evil blah blah," and the rewards of sneaking in more strictly sci-fi story arcs (or unorthodox fantasy ones) under the science-fantasy coating have been inspiring. It's worth not sweating the smaller details to have those larger opportunities.