Quote Originally Posted by Carolingian View Post
So with that logic AI, Androids, or other forms of synthetic life-forms can never be alive or sentient? So Omega and Gigi are fake and belong in a zoo. The Omicrons in general, who used to be people but then uploaded their brains into computers (not unlike the Endless), aren't a society. And what about the Crystal Exarch? We upload his memories into young G'raha after he died yet act like he's still very much the same person we travelled the first with. Is that also just fake?

I honestly couldn't disagree more. If a creature/being has self-awareness, intelligence, and the capability of change and their own dreams and desires then I'd personally consider them alive and at the very least sentient. And the Endless possess all of that. We even see them beat the Turing Test.

But I can respect it if you simply belief that artificial intelligence can never be considered sentient but then I am honestly curious if you think the same of AI characters in other franchises like EDI in Mass Effect, Data in Star Trek, Cortana in Halo, C3P0 in Star Wars,
Big strawman there, we never mentioned those characters, focus back on XIV's golden city, not Omega, not C3PO, not Wall-E or your coffee machine that says good morning every morning.
G'raha wasn't dead just asleep, both just fused you can ask him after waking him up from the Crystal tower.

You also makes a massive mix-up comparing AI that thinks for itself and AI that is ordered to think in a certain way. You need to spread your emotional thinking and logical thinking.

As for your other questions, "were we right to stop Sphene" just take the same situation in a different way. Imagine if Sphene was taking care of Undead and those undeads requires live human flesh to feed.
Would it be moral to stop Sphene? Of course it's moral, at which point does sacrificing a life to prolong the image of another is moral?