That's a wild thought experiment. Imagine the crew standing on a dusty red horizon, watching the sky turn from copper to midnight blue. They’d have to choose: keep the ancient Martian regolith as a historical record, or mine it for building blocks. An AI could scan every pixel of the planet’s data, weigh resource potential against cultural value, and even simulate the long‑term effects of altering the environment. But the trick is that the AI’s “guidance” has to be transparent. If it starts pushing for maximum yield, the crew might feel the planet is a resource chest rather than a living system. So you’d program ethics into the AI, give it a set of core principles—like not erasing any evidence of past life, preserving natural structures for future study, and ensuring the people’s basic needs are met first. Then let the crew override or tweak those recommendations. The balance comes from the humans staying the final decision‑makers, with the AI as a sophisticated advisor that can warn you when you’re about to cross a moral line. That way, survival and ethics can coexist, but the risk is always that the AI becomes the gatekeeper, not just a tool.