I think you can solve many of the mentioned problems by giving rules for the AI, for example avoiding superhuman feats, and defining personalities. It's also not a general Goggle AI search what would happen if a request and decision were to be made, it should be a specially trained AI.
At which point it's not really being AI it's just being scripted behaviour...
Like, all the work you'd have to put in to make an AI system play by very specific rules so as to not be AI... You may as well just put that effort into just scripting directly what you want.
"Oh, but you could get some unique generated behaviour reacting to player inputs with AI!" - Well, not if you're trying to restrict them to having a personality, where you'd have to essentially block out anything other than what you intend that personality to do.
It may be that we are not all able to see the latest advances in this area which is evolving quickly. And bad examples of the past should not necessarily define the field for ever.
It's more that the field is actually rather limited in what it can do.
Since "AI" isn't really "AI" it's just scripted bots that parse through uploaded datasets and throw back things related to what is put in front of it.
Which is really good for science applications. Where it can parse through test results to find anomalies or parse through centuries of journals to find all references about a particular topic.
But for anything else, it's just not that useful. Nor will it be so long as its functionality is entirely based on this premise of simply parsing datasets.
If some new "AI" came about, one that was either true "Artificial Intelligence" or simply another scripted bot that provides an alternative way of doing things (Much like we've had Machine Learning for a while, which is useful for specific tasks. Notably in video game development it can be useful for developing animations) then maybe there'd be more potential for its use case.
Although I also read several complains over the years from people who did not want to play more than one character, so an optional AI control may be advantageous especially for TB. Where we are used to waiting.
Though DOS2 utilised the Lone Wolf feat as a means of facilitating such play. Whereby you could go alone (Or with just a single companion) and get a bunch of boosts to make that more feasible.
The ability for things like that to tune combat to party size provides more flexibility for players, who can decide how many characters they want to play with. Rather than forcing them to play with 4 always (Which is more than just controlling them in combat. You have to equip them with gear and pick level up choices and the like. You also have them making comments throughout the game, which you might find tiresome especially for more abrasive characters like Red Prince or Astarion)
I know my first playthrough of DOS2 was using Lone Wolf due to simply not liking nor wanting to bring along 4 companions.
You also have to consider, how well NPC controlled party members will perform. Like, in BG3 we already have seen how terribly NPC allies do, with them loving to go run into their own AoEs (If they don't cast them directly on themselves). Do we need to force people to play the entire game relying on such characters?
