An even Darker SOMA [ending spoilers]

[Cranky Old Man]

I'd say you're assigning to much cognition to the WAU. Catherine said that it's not a persona or an AI but more like a cancer which I interpret like it having no own thoughts and only follows its single order: maintain the survival of humans/biological life. So when the meteor hit Earth's surface the WAU kind of panicked and just went AWOL and just mashed people, machinery, circuitboards and AI together. It doesn't care what the result is as long as it views it as alive. Manipulating and creating mental illusions would demand a high amount or level of cognitive thought, which I don't think the WAU is capable of.

Well, it doesn't take any additional cognition than what it already has. The humans began referring to the ARK as being a last attempt to preserve the human race, so the WAU is simply trying to preserve "humanity". Only its version of humanity isn't actually human. I don't think that machines have consciousness, which I thought that this game was all about pondering. I think that they can be programmed to APPEAR human, but ultimately they're just data and pieces of code. The scans are death looking like life, and as Catherine used WAU programs as a basis for her scans, they're also WAU puppets. There's nobody aboard the ARK - it's just a social engineering weapon of epic proportions, bent on spreading the WAU to other planets.

The WAU is probably even self-aware at this point too, wanting to spread ITSELF too. Ross mentioned stopping this in his office, and it's been awhile after he recorded those messages.

I'm also crediting the WAU for influencing people to even BUILD the ARK. Gas and nano machines can EASY subconsciously influence humans, especially in large groups.

Question regarding your playthrough. I think it was Delta, the place where you call the underwater zeppelin. Next to the landing platform there was a person, was he alive or dead? Could you read his blackbox? Because I did a no-kill run (I didn't kill Wrangler(I just tortured him), didn't kill the lady in the subway, unplug the one outside theta, delete the Scans or kill the WAU) and I think that that person was alive. I couldn't read his blackbox and he caused static when I looked at him.

ALL the corpses breathe and move like that. WAU won't allow them to "die". In the case of the cyborg corpses, then they could probably be conscious to SOME degree, if you could reanimate the cells after cell death, but I doubt it.
...so that corpse acted the same way for me too, who has killed everyone. The static occcurs both when you experience transmissions (like from the little green bots) and whenever you see stressful things (like the cyborg corpses).

If you torture the robot until he's no longer responding, I think that counts as bad. I think that if you turn the switch back off quickly, they you can say sorry to him.
Also, did you kill the robot at Delta for the chip? ...because there are small robot wrecks lying around that place, that you can probably loot. ...maybe.