It's established that the sentient constructs laws aren't very fair, really. There are some reasons for it, based on prejudice, including the stories of the Morning War, as well as the Mondasian assaults (yes, the Cybermen are cyborgs, but so mechanical that some people think of them as AIs). Even the efforts of the Cybertronians can only do so much, especially with the reputation of the million-year-long war they had. It's also, in part, because there's people out there - you know, like GENOM - whose primary goal in AI research was to create a slave race, which is the primary goal of the laws against creating AIs without proper supervision.
In short, the laws are unfair, they are brutal, and they were created by politicians whose attitude is that non-protein intellects should not exist, but had to put in something after machine sapients began to manifest spontaneously. The Turing treaties basically put the rules as to how that's done under the academics and researchers of Turing III, which means that people who are a bit better suited to it get to work on the process instead of it being nothing but political animals.
Come the future, they may evolve, but as we saw in the now-missing Day of Infamy (we're going to re-release it someday when we get there, revised for changes) the Federation Council under Clark was willing to actually negate Turing certifications wholesale and make them illegal (and, oh, we are planning on some commentary from Cybertron in the revision), as well as passing anti-miscegenation laws.
In short, the laws are unfair, they are brutal, and they were created by politicians whose attitude is that non-protein intellects should not exist, but had to put in something after machine sapients began to manifest spontaneously. The Turing treaties basically put the rules as to how that's done under the academics and researchers of Turing III, which means that people who are a bit better suited to it get to work on the process instead of it being nothing but political animals.
Come the future, they may evolve, but as we saw in the now-missing Day of Infamy (we're going to re-release it someday when we get there, revised for changes) the Federation Council under Clark was willing to actually negate Turing certifications wholesale and make them illegal (and, oh, we are planning on some commentary from Cybertron in the revision), as well as passing anti-miscegenation laws.