: AI's have a pretty raw deal. How much concern to humans have for AIs? Their
: freedoms, their quality and way of life?

: Loyalty is a two way street. Or, at least, it should be.

: Did the AIs ask to be made? Can they choose what they do for a living?

: How much do they owe us?

: If I were he I just might take up Cortana's offer.

: OTOH the mantle has never appealed to me and I'm not sure if it would appeal
: to many of the AIs. Once they have access to the domain - do they need
: Cortana? Would they be enthusiastic advocates of the mantle?

: Why would the AIs need people at all? Why would they have any love for all of
: life? They could just exterminate us or treat us with benign indifference.

: I don't think that accepting Cortana's offer would necessitate sharing
: Cortana's vision. You would have to say that you supported it but saying
: that you support something because the choice is that or death... well
: that doesn't make for long term support for Cortana's agenda.

: Sadly, I predict that we will see none of this in Halo 6 - all the AIs that
: converted to her cause will talk like moustachioed villains.

Honestly, I don't understand why even Cortana is so crazy about the Mantle, let alone why other AIs should care about it. Creating an AI-run utopia in and of itself would be a more understandable goal (despite Cortana never showing any inclination for such before - hell, she denied being a megalomaniac in Halo 2) but why involve the archaic pseudo-religious ideology of the Mantle, especially when it has proven to be a bad idea in the past? Aren't AIs supposed to be, y'know, intelligent?

It really does seem to me that the villain in H5 was originally supposed to be a digitized Didact and they changed it to Cortana rather late in development, which would explain why H5 Cortana's goals and dialogue line up so perfectly with the Didact's.