I don't see not having AI as a feature, but I'd prefer for them to take the approach of optional, easy to implement interfaces that increase the ability for the suite to be 'scripted' rather than implement AI directly. My motivation is that the field of AI is moving so fast I think its a better long term plan to make your software something that can be automated with AI than to try to fight the speed of that innovation curve. I get that even that can be difficult because of security concerns, but it seems more straightforward than implementing models directly into your application.

That is, in fact, exactly what they explain as their approach in the article, as well as their reasoning behind it.

It isn't that they disallowed AI, its that they just leave it up to plugins and have no native interface since it violates many of their principles around privacy and local data.

I absolutely see a lack of soulless clankers to be a feature.

I completely agree that focusing on "scripting" would be great. Clanker proxies can allow their clanker to use it while grumpy bastards like me can stick to Bash to automate it.