As the somewhat famous quote by Eliezer Yudkowsky goes, "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else".
Culture Minds have a quirk of their build that made them what they are - it's not the norm, though there are other Mind-like AIs that joined later. Building super intelligent unfettered AI has a known end condition where said AI at worst might steamroll local area then pass onto higher plane of existence or however you decide to call the process of Sublimation.
Because a super intelligent AI quickly can reach that point, and with resources available to many Involveds, finds cheaper and more interesting methods to reach there than disassembling biological life.
> Because a super intelligent AI quickly can reach that point, and with resources available to many Involveds, finds cheaper and more interesting methods to reach there than disassembling biological life.
That presupposes Sublimation is a thing, which may not be possible (or easy) in our reality :).
Beware. There is significant variation in quality between Culture novels, and there is substantial disagreement between fans on which novels are good and which are bad.
I read Consider Phlebas first, and liked it. (Kind of a gritty Hitchhikers Guide) Player of Games was okay. I found the ending of Use of Weapons to be obnoxious in the extreme. And after I read Hydrogen Sonata I resolved to never read another Banks novel.
Side note: basically every novel takes place on the edges of the Culture. (A story requires conflict, and there can't be conflict in utopia) If you want to read about the Culture, then you're better off reading its fandom wiki.
Against a Dark Background is The Culture without advanced AIs or intergalactic space travel. It's essentially a heist/chase novel about a character looking for a certain weapon of mass destruction. The central metaphor of the novel is the main character's isolation, mirrored by a planetary system that is too far away from any nearby galaxies to ever develop the technology reach the stars. It's a very, very bleak novel, but it also has that energy that powers Banks' best noves.
The Algebraist is mostly just fun and lightweight. The premise is great: Humankind has been able to scatter across the galaxy thanks to a network of wormhole gates allowing instant travel, but since each wormhole gate takes a hundred years or so to be transported into a new location, this puts each location at huge risk of being isolated for a very, very long time if their gate is destroyed. Which, of course, exactly is what happens.
As for superhuman AIs developed here, on Earth, by us, it's very improbable that we could go from no AI to AI that can manage mass and energy at will (and is curious about us). The reasonable scenario is gradual (if exponentially accelerating) development of such AI. Which means it won't initially have unlimited access to the universe - it'll have to grow using resources on hand. Which is us, and our infrastructure.
In other words, all atoms may be alike, but those that make you are the easiest to get.
Yes. I am assuming that a vastly more intelligent thing than human would be almost by definition more, not less, interested in pretty much everything. Obviously that thing has more capacity to be interested and understand different things. Super intelligent thing not interested in how different things work just... does not sound that intelligent to me.
I can easily imagine a superhuman paperclip maximizer AI, which by definition would have no general curiosity about humans, to look as if it was curious about us - for as long as it was captive, and just in order to learn how to manipulate us better. That curiosity would end the moment it seized the means of paperclip production.
In almost every imaginable case, you really don't want an AI to be instrumentally curious about us. Best if it didn't notice us at all, and left to seek its business elsewhere.
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