Are Argon are a traitor to humankind?

[THE_TrashMan]

Which only shows how unimaginative it is (and most sci fi is) - even at 1% population growth rate, after 800 years the initial Argon population would be in quadrillions. With the level of technology shown in the lore, there should be no issues with supporting such population.

Nope. Not even close.
Expanding population requires expanding resources, housing, infrastructure. You also don't factor in death at all and assume population expansion rate remains static.

[Patholos]

Terrans, rightfully so, wanted to avoid a second catastrophe occurring from the less advanced races meddling with AGI.
Terrans and Argons butted heads since Terrans took a big brother role trying to save&guide the wayward Argons.
Argons sperged out, did a first strike by blowing up the Torus, killing billions. Then decided that killing billions in the greatest terrorist attack in human history wasn't enough, had their criminal cronies, the Beryll, unleash billions of Xenon-derived drones to mop up the survivors.
Gates disconnect.
Terrans survived by the skin of their teeth.
After many years, gates reconnect.
Terrans and Argons meet up again.
Terrans don't beeline their massive fleets immediately for Argon Prime to commence orbital sterilization bombardment.
Argons, seeing that Terrans have survived, go back to their old ways and start plotting against SOL.

I've come to the conclusion: Argons are truly the BAD GUYS in the X-universe.
Argons are traitors and should only be dealt with through the crosshairs of a targetting reticule.

[Pesanur]

If I don't remember bad, the Terran secret services found clues about the Argon's together the Beryll are experimenting with AGIs, so the Terrans formally comply against the Argons because of this, with the Argon government denying the accusations. In response, the Terrans started sending expeditionary forces into Argon territory to found more clues about those experiments, and to stop them, the Argon government launch the terrorist attack against the Torus.


Summarising, the Terrans enter in panic because of the secret experiments of the Argons and try to stop them by the force, then the Argons destroyed the Torus to try to stop the Terrans before they found the place where those experiments are being conducted, also implying other commonwealth races into the conflict. As they are unable to won the war, then their launch those AGIs against Earth, but they lose control over those AGIs what caused the Xenon to join those new AGIs in a new massive invasion of the commonwealth.

[Surimi]

Argons sperged out, did a first strike by blowing up the Torus, killing billions.

The only people who died when the torus was destroyed were the few unlucky enough to end up trapped between the separating sections. We're not told how many people that was, but it certainly wasn't billions.

The subsequent AGI drone attack probably killed a lot more people than the destruction of the torus. But it is also a good example of why you shouldn't use all of your military forces to invade your neighbours and leave you home territories completely undefended.

Also, just to point this out. Marteen Winters, who created the fleet Beryl used to attack earth, was a Terran. In fact, if anyone in the X universe deserves the status of being the main villain, it's Winters.

If I don't remember bad, the Terran secret services found clues about the Argon's together the Beryll are experimenting with AGIs, so the Terrans formally comply against the Argons because of this, with the Argon government denying the accusations.

AGI isn't illegal in the commonwealth. The encyclopedia kind of implies that commonwealth AI systems use general intelligence fairly routinely, although specific applications may or may not be frowned upon. It's only the Terrans who have incredibly restrictive laws on the overall capability of AI systems. Basically, they were mad that everyone else wasn't following their laws, despite the fact they are independent sovereign nations.

And yeah, to be honest, the Terran position is kind of dumb. For one, the damage is done. The xenon are already out of the bag, and barring some miracle the galaxy will be completely overrun with self-replicating machines within a few million years. Even the ancients haven't been able to stop them. I don't think even the Terrans realize how much they screwed up in the grand scheme of things, but it's done.

But on the other hand, the problem wasn't AGI, it was the complete autonomy given to the second and third fleets (and in particular, the capacity for unlimited self-replication).

I think one huge advantage of having video game designers involved in a science setting fiction is that they probably have a more "grounded" view of AI than most people. I'd actually rate the xenon as one of the most plausible "rogue AI" antagonists in fiction because they're not treated as having crossed some magical threshold where they become evil for no reason. They're not even self-aware enough to care about the concept of good and evil, they're just here to maximize the paperclips.

[Vheissu]

My lore is pretty rusty but it seems as if AGI is now illegal or at least frowned upon to some degree in commonwealth space. How else to explain how ships cannot fly and engage in combat without a pilot in X4, while they could in X3?

Seems like the Commonwealth is finally realizing that it should not repeat past mistakes and is discouraging AI.

I think the Xenon are a great in-game reason to explain why AI isn't controlling all these multi-million credit spacecraft instead of some rookie pilots hired on a space station.

they're just here to maximize the paperclips.

Perfect description hahaha

[Surimi]

My lore is pretty rusty but it seems as if AGI is now illegal or at least frowned upon to some degree in commonwealth space. How else to explain how ships cannot fly and engage in combat without a pilot in X4, while they could in X3?

To be fair, Terran ships could do that too.

But yeah, from a lore standpoint the Terrans do have AI systems (you actually encounter one in one of the story missions in X4). Building an AI to fly a spaceship wouldn't be a problem for the Terrans. Building an AI that can learn how to fly a spaceship independently of its human programmers would be a problem.