For sure. Banks writes most of the Minds as quite proud of the Culture as a whole. Of the Minds, of the drones, of the humans. They are up to something together

For sure. Banks writes most of the Minds as quite proud of the Culture as a whole. Of the Minds, of the drones, of the humans. They are up to something together, with a profound sense of responsibility to one another and the common enterprise. And when they aren't, Banks writes them as going off on their own to do what pleases them. And even those, as with the Gray Area, tend to have a deep sense of respect for their fellow thinking beings, humans included. And if I recall rightly, Banks paints this as a conscious choice of the Culture and its Minds. There was a bit somewhere about "perfect AIs always sublime", where AIs without instilled values promptly fuck off to whatever's next. And I think it's those values that are a big part of what Banks was exploring in his work. The Affront especially comes to mind. What does kindness do with cruelty? Or the Empire of Azad creates a similar contrast. What the Culture was up to in both those stories was about something much more rich than a machine's pets.