Iain banks creates a universe known as the Culture containing many drones and minds, which are AI equipped with powerful computational capabilities assumed to match and in some cases greatly exceed human complexity. They are often weaponized and treated as full citizens of the culture, frequently in roles superior to humans, whom in many ways are cultivated and overseen in a manner that echoes agrarian methods.

It is interesting to note that there is no word in our language that can better translate empathy of a machine to human without anthropomorphism, because of our linguistic (and consequently cultural) limitations due to our frame of reference.

Even basic electronics and plumbing hardware use the term male to female. Why is the existence and naming of gender so inherently and deeply connected with our ability for compassion? Even people name their boats, cars, etc, and there is some gender assumed or implied, or if there is not, it is almost a radical, counter cultural statement.

Machines being disconnected from something as base as gender is just one of many potential instinctive biological objections humans might have. Is it better for humans become more like machines or to bend machines to become more like humans? Which would allow for a more peaceful and efficient merging as we progress towards transhumanism?

So many people view and define the informational singularity as a sudden explosive occurrence, but what if the process were slow, insidious, and organic, much like an evolutionary path of many parasite-host (or symbiotic) relationships … even now, we may already be in the midst of transition.