The world of Deepness in the Sky (at that time, A Fire Upon the Deep is a very different time) doesn't have AI. It has civilizations that rise and fall every f

The world of Deepness in the Sky (at that time, A Fire Upon the Deep is a very different time) doesn't have AI. It has civilizations that rise and fall every few centuries. The Qeng Ho are a trading culture that was formed to try to bind the wandering traders of the universe together into something that could stifle those collapses. This is probably strongly influenced by Foundation by Asimov. Other things are quite advanced - but computing is rather "dumb". What is there is driven by a great weight of inertia of massive software (all written by regular humans) that itself is too large to fully audit and understand. The story it tells is very much one about humans and societies.