Honestly, I gave up trying to figure out the Exodian blade plotline. Looking at it from simply a gameplay perspective, it would indeed seem that the AIs were subordinates of the Core (assuming 'the Core' is what various journal entries meant when discussing the evil brother, which considering how often the game uses the word 'core' may be a dangerous assumption to make) as the Exodian Blade win condition is supposed to kill the Core, which stops the AI. If they were independent creatures, why would that be the case?
However, perhaps due to it being DLC, the whole 'the AIs are puppets, and this evil ancient alien is the puppet master' never seemed to mesh with the rest of the lore, which always seemed to suggest the AIs betrayed humanity on their own volition (at least to me). And frankly, I prefer that concept a lot more, it seems much more ... poetic, perhaps? Since AIW2 is a remake retelling of AIWC, all that really matters is what players and the devs think is the better story, and that can be made the official lore regardless of what the gameplay or journal entries might say - as long as we're not changing the game's foundational lore like saying the AIs are actually overlords from AVWW or something, I don't have a problem with it.
Hmm ... well, since the thread is already necro'd, it occurred that I have a lore question: how much lore will end up in the base game, and in what forms? I know there's some kickstarter stuff, but how much non-kickstarter stuff will there be?
Or to put in a way that may be more easily answered, can you provide a rough estimate as to what percentage of total lore entries will be generated by the Loremaster backer?