@frostwolf okay, because I'm baked right now you get DUNESPLAINING

So... if you haven't read the books (and if you do, read the first one, the rest are nice but not a must have) there was an AI revolt, then eventually humans revolted against the machines and in the wake of that, their entire society is deeply paranoid about, and has workarounds to avoid anything close to redeveloping AI.

So there's the Guild of Navigators (people who've used this super-drug-thing, Melange, to develop psychic powers like teleporting things, which is the workaround for how to have a spacefaring society without AI). They're threatening the Emperor of the Known Universe really subtly - "Ix has really good machines" essentially means "all we need to do is spread word that you *let* Ix develop AI and people will depose you."

I like to quote that chunk of the 1984 movie to indicate that I've just eaten pot.