Why don't the Eldar use robots? I know why the Imperium doesn't. And I don't mean wraithbone constructs...

Why don't the Eldar use robots? I know why the Imperium doesn't. And I don't mean wraithbone constructs, I mean beep boop robots. It would help with their personnel problems.

For the same reason as the Imperium?

Do Eldar have proper science?

It could be they are just using models the Old Ones gave them and the Dark Eldar have just recently innovated some of their stuff based on models that fell out of use by the craftworlders.

The Imperium learned the hard way that AI always leads to disaster in 40K. Presumably the Eldar either learned earlier an with fewer casualties, or predicted and avoided it.

The Men of Iron are supposed to be the reason NO ONE in 40K uses robots. Except the Tau because they haven't learned yet.

Actually this would be nice plot moving: Tau invent Men of Iron, they destroy half of the race and then take interest in Tyranids and Necrons.

Isn't most of the Eldar's "technology" based on psyker powers?

There is an excerpt(? forget the correct word) in the 6E Tau codex where an inquisitor alludes to the possibility of this.

>Why don't the Eldar use robots?

They don't have to. Everything can be done either psychically or with wraith constructs, so robots really don't have much of a purpose.

>I know why the Imperium doesn't.

But the Imperium DOES use robots. This isn't even counting the battle automata.

Wraithguard are eldar robots, but run by souls and not wetware.

>Do Eldar have proper science?

They do. They're just able to combine that science with their racial psychic abilities into forms that are "scientifically magical."

Wraithbone is a good example. It's created via magic, but there are set processes and rituals that go into creating one that require research and study and were accomplished through detailed experimentation to create a reliable formula.

Yes, Magic and Sorcery is very often a Science in settings where it exists, because it relies on set formulas and experimentation to accomplish, as well as collected bodies of knowledge.

If I recall, the scarabs, wraiths and spyders are basically Tau drones, but more violent

Cannot recall the source, but the Eldar did have robots, who also happened to be wraithbone constructs. During the height of their power legions of AI piloted wraithguard and wraithlords did their dirty work while they wallowed in hedonism. Or something like that.

Nu-canon is not true-canon. Imperium doesn't have robots.

Ah what? Thery're from GW theyre canon.

Kastelans are are basic robots and have no AI which is why they arnt heretical.

You're a fucking moron. GW and FW keep the canon. You can argue about the "all info is propaganda" angle, but you don't get to just shove your head a mile up your own ass.

Robots aren't true AI, and therefore fine to use, but skirting the edges of tech-heresy. Those that do use them are usually important enough to get away with it, or just don't care.

Both of which are regular in the AdMech.

Kastelans use tightly defined data wafers inserted into their chest by their data priests minders and are restricted to their last standing wafer in the event of their data priests death, apparently often to comedic ends. I believe there's a fluff paragraph in the codex of a squad receiving march order before their priest died and were left to march endlessly or something to that effect.

Damn. I misread that and thought that the robots themselves were engaging in hedonism. And now I am sad I don't get to see robot orgies

This is a weird idea spawned by HFY autists that think "HUMANS ARE THE ONLY ONES WITH PROPER SCIENCE!!!!#@#!@#DAF" The Eldar have very advanced science they combine with their psychic powers.

Because the Eldar don't make use of technology in the same way as the Imperium.
They wouldn't develop artificial intelligence. They don't have computers. All their technology is controlled by thought.

An artificial mind created by psychic techniques would be a kind of formless entity of pure thought and emotion, which are more commonly known as daemons.

Whatever you say big boi.

As someone who just browses around on Veeky Forums, and has a passing interest in 40k and the such, could you explain to me what the men of iron are, how they came to be, and where they are now?

I wonder if the Eldar had invented any kind of pleasurebot during the times before the birth of Slaanesh
they must have had some real sophisticated pleasure maximum stuff

I'm pretty sure that the reason behind them not using robots is because it paved the way to the late hedonistic lifestyle that ruined them.

Skynet on steroids in SPAAAAACE!

Because Craftworld Eldar follow a very regimented lifestyle with people assigned to single-minded paths.

Meanwhile Dark Eldar have a taste for slaves. Robots don't cry.

Why is there no superintelligent AI in 40k? Why does scarcity exist in 40k? Why do people hit each other with swords in 40k?

Because it's absurd fantasy not meant to be believable.

Dune's ripoff like most of the Imperium.

Something something fuck Necrons; that's why!

I'm pretty sure their Gods were some kind of Warp-based AI made by the Old Ones.

>Why is there no superintelligent AI in 40k?

Banned by Imperium, also since there exist dark chaos virus codes, no system would remain pure for long if it came under attack.

>Why does scarcity exist in 40k?

the resources of the Imperium are almost infinite, the problem is getting them to right place at right time. With better organization and more efficient rule, the Imperium would already have wiped out every possible enemy in every direction.

>Why do people hit each other with swords in 40k?

Khorne does not like cheaters! Besides, sniping and orbital bombardment get boring, it's a more thrilling and fun experience to chop everything with your own hands instead.

>the resources of the Imperium are almost infinite, the problem is getting them to right place at right time. With better organization and more efficient rule, the Imperium would already have wiped out every possible enemy in every direction.


You can't have that without AI. Galactic governments are impossible without AI.

not true
Guilliman's autism is more efficient than any AI could ever be
and doesn't crack when facing Chaos Viral Code

only Spiritual Liege can provide truly efficient bureaucracy

When will the Tau create Vger?

They use a governmental sledgehammer when they have to become involved, but don't have to be involved very often.
Even with their massive bureaucracy, the Imperium's actual rule is very simple. Taxes are extremely static and almost exclusively taken in manpower for the IG (Gear and the like is the individual planet's problem) and the only connection most planets have to the central government is through their planetary governor, who names his own successor in most cases and governs the planet how he sees fit. Their universal laws are relatively simple (Don't deal with outside forces, don't be a heretic) and everything else is left to the local government.
If a planet flagrantly shuns its taxes or breaks imperial law, then eventually a crusade will show up to scour the planet clean and/or depose the government. If it doesn't do either of those two things, the central government is liable to forget that it even exists.

Precisely, the Imperium is terribly run and inefficient because it is impossible to run a galactic empire without it being decentralised as fuck or full of AI running things. You need so many hierarchical levels to run a galaxy of millions and billions of planets that planetary governors quickly become "the rabble" to the "emperor", "president" or whatever.

>AI
1. Imperial law doesn't matter because a) no evidence of them from DAoT, b) fucking xenos, c) all it takes is 1 guy to pull it off

2. "Muh chaos virus" is a) a theory about why Men of Iron rebelled and not confirmed to actually exist, b) as if the seriously braindead legions of chaos could even pull it off, I mean honestly, these idiots don't have any restrictions on technological growth and they still fly around in giant retarded battleships with slave crews, and do not employ AI, c) highly unlikely that the human-level (if that) intelligence of Chaos can compete with superhuman intelligence of a self improving AI. The most damning evidence against the "AI are easy to corrupt" idea is that Chaos uses meatbags to fight its battles and not robots.

>scarcity
The Imperium is indeed an assfuck stupid organization, but I was referring to the absence of nanofabrication. By all accounts, the most advanced forge worlds might fail to impress Henry fucking Ford with their technical sophistication and level of automation - let alone the utter absence of simple technology like 3D printing or VR. There isn't even fucking internet in 40k.

>swords
It's a silly wargame so yeah that's why they do it, but don't pretend it or any of this other bullshit is remotely justifiable in terms of creating a believable setting.

>It's a silly wargame so yeah that's why they do it, but don't pretend it or any of this other bullshit is remotely justifiable in terms of creating a believable setting.

They could have some justification in boarding actions. You don't want to harm the ship.

>warships
>needing any crew except maybe command staff

>Do Eldar have proper science?
They indeed do have proper science and technology (which is what I think you meant), it just happens to hinge on the user of their technology having psychic powers. The reason they don't make huge scientific leaps or innovate much is because they've already solved most of the problems their society faces. They're deeply aware of the forces of the universe and of the warp, they've reached the levels of technology far beyond their actual needs and their methods of warfare are perfected over thousands of years.

>Dark Eldar have a taste for slaves.
indeed, they're like the Daleks in that they'll use the painful or humiliating option even if a more efficient option exists.

Tzeentch, the God of Hope was the most powerful of the Chaos Gods during the Dark Age of Technology. The jealous Nurgle and Khorne beat him up and smashed him to pieces, causing the Age of Strife and the Iron Men Rebellion. He hasn't been the same ever since with pieces still missing in the warp.

Didn't the elder empire do this? I thought the heavy automation of everything including defense was why they had so much time they could party slaanesh in to existence.

there exist laws that make sure that a certain portion of the workforce consists of actual humans, mostly to keep humans employed, the alternatives are worse (hedonistic life style and slow decay, declining pop growth)
I don't remember exactly about Chaos virus code, but there is this HH book about Mars falling to civil war, with Mechanicum on Horus' side using "virus" code to make their enemies unable to fight back. Somehow Emprahs "golden shining code" saves the day. Omnissiah code being able to prevent Chaos viral code from taking over the entire planet, it was a weird book tbqh.

Internet might exist locally, but carrying data gets harder when you would have to do it between worlds that are light years apart. Also it might store heretical information, which is a good reason to just prevent it altogether. Ignorance is bliss. Ford was an innovator, something that Mechanicum does not approve of. Forgeworlds in general are a mess, yet they function barely enough, which justifies their existence. As long as certain factories keep producing the required stuff, the rest of the world might as well be some random pile of shit, as far the Imperium is concerned.

you do need staff for maintaining some parts that require continuous maintenance, for example reactors.
Then there is the fact that apparently various machine spirits of the ship need incense to remain happy... so you need priests in hoods to carry their services that please the machine spirits on that ship. (wtf)

>the imperium is really fucking stupid and bad at everything
Yeah, no shit. That it would ever achieve any position of galactic dominance is laughable at best.

>techpriests
>understanding computers, let alone AI
Nope.

Techpriests are a retard cult which are only the most sophisticated human faction because GRIMDERP fiat.

>staff is needed
Robots controlled by the ship AI.

>That it would ever achieve any position of galactic dominance is laughable at best
It's a galactic empire in decline, it made most of its real gains pre-Fall, back when it had technology that was almost on par with the Eldar. Now it's collapsing beneath its own laughable retardation, but even empires in free-fall take a while to fully collapse, especially ones that big.

>Internet might exist locally, but carrying data gets harder when you would have to do it between worlds that are light years apart
Reminder that the only FTL comms the Imperium has are astropaths, who are blind men and women who scream a telepathic message into and through Hell and hope it doesn't miss or get intercepted by demons. Also, astropaths have an unfortunate tendency to explode whenever the Warp is especially turbulent.
A galactic Internet is, therefore, quite simply not feasible. More prosperous worlds might have a datanet that middle class or higher people can access, and forge worlds have the noosphere, which is an AR internet for techpriests. Anything larger scale quickly becomes infeasible.

Worth noting is that even the Eldar have to actually get up and take a jog through the webway if they want to talk to a world any serious distance away.

The Empire curiously enough begun their "fall" about 2-5 decades after Emperor left the Crusade and returned to Terra. Epic failure at delegating power which led to more failures, it's kinda funny in the end.

Mechanicum is retarded, true. But then again, we still don't properly understand how machine spirits work or even exist.

Ships can do with minimum crew, but often more are at hand for a variety of reasons, especially at larger warships due ships having more functions in them than in a boring trade barge. But having thousands of slaves hidden in the lower decks gets weird, but it's grimdark so whatever. If the ships ever get boarded, at least the Word Bearers won't run out of sacrificial meat in a while.

I wonder if the Emperor had ever any intentions of letting webway turn into some kind of structure that also allows data to travel. Say, the noosphere extends through webways.

how long does webway "jog" take, hours, weeks?
I understand that entrances exist in a variety of places, craftwords, maidenworlds, and they somehow connect... there has to be some kind of central hub?

The idea that it could have ever conquered the galaxy in the first place is insane. The Imperium is, on most levels, vastly inferior technologically to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, let alone contemporary or near future human civilization. An interstellar civilization, especially one capable of FTL travel, WILL have ended conventional material scarcity. At the absolute minimum it will have automated the vast majority of its labor, certainly all its industrial production. It is very likely to be led by superintelligent, self-improving AI. The notion that this race would ever fight a terrestrial war with anither species for some minerals they can mine in nigh-infinte abundance on junk floating through every solar system in the universe is insane.

>FTL comms
Yes, again, I understand tbe Imperium is retarded. But there is an obvious solution, the one used by Tau, of course there's whatever the Necrons use, but a STL comm relay system using buoys dropped by FTL drone ships could set up an extranet real fast.

>An interstellar civilization, especially one capable of FTL travel, WILL have ended conventional material scarcity
If its FTL is quick and easy, maybe.
4k FTL is literally spending months or years traveling through hell while on a variable time scale.
A ship can literally arrive before it left or arrive centuries later with its crew only experiencing a few weeks.

>. An interstellar civilization, especially one capable of FTL travel, WILL have ended conventional material scarcity. At the absolute minimum it will have automated the vast majority of its labor, certainly all its industrial production. It is very likely to be led by superintelligent, self-improving AI. The notion that this race would ever fight a terrestrial war with anither species for some minerals they can mine in nigh-infinte abundance on junk floating through every solar system in the universe is insane.
Therefore, all sci fi wargames are impossible and implausible and not good sci fi. Glad we cleared that up, now fuck off so we can talk about this sci fi wargame.

FTL is a technical benchmark. Developing FTL travel requires a degree of technological sophistication that far surpasses our own.

Furthermore, FTL travel does not exclusively mean Warp travel. See: Necrons, Webway, Kroot, Tau.

The level of backwardness in the 40k universe is not due to a sensible cause in the lore of the setting. It is due to authorial intent and fiat. You cannot justify it.

Sorry that you're so rustled by the truth.

> Developing FTL travel requires a degree of technological sophistication that far surpasses our own.
Not in 40k. In 40k, developing FTL requires the ability to tear a hole into hell and have some psionic being capable of navigating through hell.
Tell me, what is the technology level it takes to enter literal actual hell?

The webway is in the warp. The Tau either skip along the surface of the warp or don't have FTL at all, depending on the source.
Necrons are some kind of bullshit that is so far beyond the rest of the setting that it's meaningless.

I think it is mentioned that Warp travel used to be a lot nicer. Also, long-periods of stagnation can happen. Egypt stayed the same for thousands of years with little advances. Some of the scavenged technologies were designed and operated by AI, which means they can't be replicated by modern humans in 40k.

Circumnavigated their world 3 times before their power units failed

>not in 40k
Not a relevant point. Humanity, when it developed Warp travel, didn't use psykers or navigators to do it. They used computers. Their civilization is literally our own in the future, thus they should be at least as advanced as us with the addition of FTL travel. DAoT further upd the ante with the implication that labor was mostly automated, though conspicuously lacks superintelligent AI or, far as is known nanofabrication, VR, or even 3D printing. This is because the authors don't understand technology or progress, and more to the point, they don't care. They have people hitting each other with chainsaw swords in the year 40,000.

>how long does webway "jog" take, hours, weeks?
Impossible to quantify just based on real-world distance, sections of the webway that are adjacent can be the other side of the universe. Commorragh is a 'city' made out of dozens of individual realms witht he cross portals jammed open and locked, if you look at the map in the Harlequins codex that shows webway locations on the actual galaxy Commorragh is in around twelve different places all over the galaxy, but inside the webway you can walk from one subrealm to another in seconds.

>The idea that it could have ever conquered the galaxy in the first place is insane
The exact situation you described in that paragraph is what the pre-fall human empire was like. post-fall the Great Crusade hammered the remnants together into the nascent Imperium while the Eldar were massively on the back foot and no other powerful alien species were really around yet. The next 10,000 years have been the Imperium's slow motion collapse as more and more sections are cannibalised by aliens, rebel or simply get lost in the accounting. Even in the Great Crusade worlds were only notionally in the Imperium, in real terms they were basically almost on their own.

They used computers that have since stopped working correctly. They still exist in the bowels of Mars. They are, without exception, HAL level or worse. The mechanicus sends many expeditions down there to retrieve old technology. Very, very few return.
>superintelligent AI
Existed, without exception became corrupted by chaos.
>nanofabrication
STCs
>VR
Exists
>3D printing
STC

You don't seem to realize that 40k is space fantasy. It has demons and the warp can easily affect things, and it always affects things in a negative way.

>DAoT humanity was what you described
No, DAoT humanity is a silly, incoherent mess which thought colonizing planets and growing crops and having sapient human-level intelligence robots working in factories were sensible things to do. DAoT humanity bothered with absurdly anachronistic things like "trade" and "warfare". They were so fragile that not a single complete record of their colony startup kit exists in known space. They were apparently so primitive that the Emperor, a superintelligent person who /lived/ in this time brought nothing apart from quack genetics out of it, and actually thought that fucking/tech-priests/ were advanced enough to bargain with. No, DAoT humanity was a joke, and a poor one at that.

Retconned memes. Those haven't shown up since before the 3rd edition canon reset, and are just made to pander to retards.

>chaos corrupted ai
Then why don't the Chaos gods have their dumbass followers build a fucking superintelligent AI and have it win their war?

Why hasn't the Dark Mechanicus or some heretek or a xenos created a von Neumann swarm or relativistic kill vehicle or nanofabrication etc. etc. etc.

I'll tell you why. Because they can't. Because they are dumbasses. The people that write them are dumbasses. The setting is absolutely full of dumb shit.

>DAoT humanity bothered with absurdly anachronistic things like "trade" and "warfare"

That's because marx will always be wrong no matter how many weeds you do

>needing to trade when you can have a fleet of mining drones supply you with enough raw and fissile materials to fab literally anything you can conceive of
>fighting wars when you can just build a personal ringworld or Dyson sphere 10 billion ly from any hostile life

FTL is impossible, nerds. You can't go faster than causality itself.

>Then why don't the Chaos gods have their dumbass followers build a fucking superintelligent AI and have it win their war?
Because chaos doesn't play well together and the AI have always been depicted as extra hateful. Also, they don't have the computer technology base to make them. They might try, but again, they don't play well together and anyone who does probably gets killed before they make a breakthrough.

>Why hasn't the Dark Mechanicus or some heretek or a xenos created a von Neumann swarm or relativistic kill vehicle or nanofabrication etc. etc. etc.
Why haven't they made things that are like exterminatus, but not as useful, easy to create, easy to deploy, or convenient to carry on a ship? Well gee, I don't know.
Nanofabrication is part of the STC system. Chaos tends to fuck them up when they find them to prevent the Imperium from using them later.

>The setting is absolutely full of dumb shit.
Well...yeah man, that's kind of the point. I mean, did you miss the noise marine with the electric guitar?

>relativistic kill vehicle
But why tho? Even in serious science fiction this is a shit weapon only recommended on cost effectiveness considering habitable planets aren't all that common and RKVs fuck them up, far better to use something that'll kill the population and leave the planet looking nice. They're not even that effective at taking out an even slightly mobile target because of the distances you're talking about in space.

>You don't want to harm the ship.
>You don't want to harm the 5km chunk of adamantium
>With your man-portable firearms
ok

>needing trade when all tribe have carribou and personal rock pile
>fighting wars when big land expands for more seasons that it takes a bear to grow to big big

Yeah nerds, our theory of the physical universe is perfectly complete and nothing could possibly overturn it

t. Not Carl Popper

Given how hard is to travel to other stars and the energy requirements for it, no material in existence would EVER justify interstellar trade.

Nonsense statement, but most FTL is not about literally going at FTL speeds, it's about getting somewhere faster than light does.

>AI is like, uh, SUPER chaotic and uh, like hard to control, bro
Just listen to yourself.

>b-but chaos infighting!
Not an argument.

>externinatus is better than von Neumann swarm or rkkv
Wew lad, you must be of those types that enjoy DnD.

>nanofabrication is STC
Uh, no, that's not how technology works. Nanofabrication is not "part of" anything. Further, your dumb "chaoos" schtick doesn't hold when the groups I mentioned aren't Imperium. In fact, the D Mechanicus /is/ chaos, so there's absolutely no reason that they wouldn't use STC tech.

A fucking von neumann swarm would be incredibly more useful than exterminatus. At that point you're dealing with the tyranids but instead of needing biomass they can consume literally the whole fucking planet if necessary to make more of itself, and the whole thing grows exponentially

The speed of light is not about light. In fact, the universe could care less about light. It is about the speed of causality. It is the maximum relative speed at which to parts of the universe can "talk" to each other. All elemental particles, all of them massless, are always travelling at the maximum possible speed of this universe.

>Just listen to yourself.
That's what the setting says. Every AI they run into is chaosified and very dangerous, usually because it controls old security systems.

>Not an argument.
Absolutely an argument. Chaos hasn't won yet because they keep killing each other instead of the Imperium.

>Wew lad, you must be of those types that enjoy DnD.
"Hey, instead of dropping one (1) of these planet busters we're already carrying, let's go find a big old asteroid and waste weeks making it go fast"

>Uh, no, that's not how technology works. Nanofabrication is not "part of" anything. Further, your dumb "chaoos" schtick doesn't hold when the groups I mentioned aren't Imperium. In fact, the D Mechanicus /is/ chaos, so there's absolutely no reason that they wouldn't use STC tech.
Nanofabrication is "part of" the STCs, which means it's in the setting. And every STC chaos has ever gotten their hands on has been boobytrapped and left for the Imperium. The dark Mechanicus is more interested in working out new and heretical technology, not using old sanctioned shit.

Or, or, and hear me out on this, you could use a single virus bomb and wipe out all life on the planet without the risk of grey gooing yourself and still leave the planet usable for later colonization.

The Iron Hands have a Grey Goo Exterminatus.

You wouldn't use a von neumann swarm and make it consume everything it found if you wanted to use the planet later, you use one if you want to erase whole planetary systems from the map

You are so dumb that it's physically painful to think that people like you live on this planet.

Wrong.

Or you can use a single bomb that literally turns the planet into an asteroid belt.

Sorry that your autism doesn't align with the setting at all.
RKVs are not as efficient as a single bomb. Von Neumann devices are not as efficient as a single bomb, but are much more dangerous to use.
Nanofabrication is not a golden cure-all and it's already in the setting.
Chaos, the faction that is literally chaotic and powered by demons from emotion based hell is not a logical group of people. Most of its members don't even qualify as people, since they're demons that only want one or two very specific things in life.

Planets are very resilient. It is likely that the Earth will be swallowed by the Sun during the phase of Red Giant. It will still take 300 for Earth to completely melt and dissolve into the star.

And it takes one exterminatus bomb to destroy a planet.
This is canon. The Imperium can and does wipe entire solar systems off the map. They try to not do that too often, since planets within their borders are technically a finite resource, but they are willing to do it if they can't win a slugfest.

And using a von neumann swarm would be far, far, far cheaper by the mere fact that it literally runs itself

Two-Stage Cyclonic Torpedoes are more rare and only truly used against Necrons. Leaving a planet devoid of life is often enough for most exterminatus operations.

Why would it be cheaper than the bombs they've already got on hand?
And frankly, von neumann swarms are uncontrollable. It's a huge risk compared to a planet cracker, atmosphere igniter, or virus bomb.

>Those haven't shown up since before the 3rd edition canon reset

This is where you say that those are not the same because of a couple of letters in their name that has nothing to do with GW´s copyright policy to rename everything.

I wonder if Virus Bombs are nanomachines. They apparently can wipe out the biosphere of a planet in a matter of minutes.

The whole POINT is that it is uncontrollable, the original post bringing it up mentioned it as the Dark Mechanicus making one to fuck shit up
>Why would it be cheaper than the bombs they've already got on hand?
Because you only need a relatively tiny initial investment for it to work, then it starts eating planets and requires no outside input. You could still put manual overrides to mantain some sense of control and save them for later

>That's what the setting says.
AKA, the authors are dumbasses.

>Every AI they run into is chaosified and very dangerous, usually because it controls old security systems.
Then it should be a big boon to the forces of Chaos, since a superintelligent AI will vastly overmatch anything the pinheaded legions of meatwaste or demons could muster.

>Absolutely an argument. Chaos hasn't won yet because they keep killing each other instead of the Imperium.
Except there doesn't need to be any unity. We're talking about a stand-alone actor: 1 superintelligence hooked up to a couple of starter nanoswarms to get it rolling. That's FAR less diplomatically stressful than a Black Crusade or even a fucking warband.

>"Hey, instead of dropping one (1) of these planet busters we're already carrying, let's go find a big old asteroid and waste weeks making it go fast"
"Hey, instead of spending months jumping through hell on a space cathedral guided by a mutant to drop off an irreplaceable wonderweapon from a bygone age in hostile space, why don't we program some drones to rig up an RKKV out of a local asteroid?"

(1/2)

>Nanofabrication is "part of" the STCs, which means it's in the setting
No, that's not what that means and that's not a sensible response to my argument. First, STCs possibly containing plans for nanofabrication does not make nanofabrication part of the STC, in the same way that the listing for your local weather channel on TVGuide doesn't make the local weather channel part of TVGuide. Nanofabrication, if it ever existed, and there's little reason to believe it did in 40k (because the authors are stupid), existed before and after it might have been added to the STC library, independently of that research. One does not need to recover an STC document in order to invent the technology. That is a fucking juvenile, literally /tech-priest/ style of thinking.

>The dark Mechanicus is more interested in working out new and heretical technology, not using old sanctioned shit.
Oh, they're "not interested" in ending scarcity, in thus being able to pursue far more complicated and advanced research, in addition to being freed of an absurd slave economy and reliance on the legions?

Right, because they'd rather stick grenade launcher on a chainsword or something. For Chaos.

What stops an AI from having psychic powers?

In 40k? Not having a connection to the warp. Machines which use warp shit still seem to need an actual psyker to make them work, or for a daemon to possess them

>First, STCs possibly containing plans for nanofabrication does not make nanofabrication part of the STC
STCs are fabrication devices that can take whatever junk you throw into it and spit out whatever technology you need. You could have a baneblade made of cardboard and paper clips if you had a proper STC, cardboard, and paper clips on hand.

And yeah, the dark mechanicus, being mentally influenced by the same highly violent, chaotic emotions that all members of chaos are, are more interested in mounting a grenade launcher on a chainsword than "fixing scarcity" or whatever.

Why is an organic brain more capable to producing a soul than a machine?

Machine Spirit could perfectly be an AI's soul.

Yes.
And having a soul (Or having a blob of anti-soul where your soul should be) is how organics protect themselves from chaos influence. Faith and belief has real effects in 40k.
So an AI, without a soul or blank/null-power, has no way to protect its mind.