Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-7657843-20150509205259/@comment-1298029-20150510194759

1) "design sentience" is still a strong claim, and this particular wording is not supported by the movies: the designer of Ultron was Tony Stark; he created the matrix of neural pathway equivalents that allowed the AI to run. Likewise, Ultron, designed the Vision. What the gem provided was not so much design ("how"), but some crucial element or know-how that enabled that design to support a sentient consciousness ("why"). It's a fine line, I admit, but I wouldn't pick "design" as the wording. If you won't consider my other options, I'd prefer the origina, although vague, "grant", to "design" here.

2) I guess "grant powers to non-powered beings" is not wrong, but it's a different question than "grant powers to humans". Asgardians and Kree are not by default "powered".

(Thor and Ronan maybe are, but Sif and Vin-Tak aren't as far as we know; their strength, longevity, and durability are implied to be natural attributes of their biology -- of course at which point racial attributes become powers (say, the Celestials from the comics were an entire race that had superpowers, so what were they "super" powerful in relation to? humans, sure, but probably not the average member of their race... but that's a different debate -- in particular, "Is the definition of a "superpower" something that one's native race normally doesn't possess, or something that humans normally don't possess?" I'm not sure anyone's ever done a treatment of that. Maybe I'll start a thread. :) )

Bottom line, we know the gem granted powers to previously normal humans. We don't know (among other things) two different things: What would it do to non-humans, and what it would do to humans who already have superpowers. (Also, the additional distinction between "normal" non-humans and "superpowered relative to their own race" non-humans is possible, depending on the outcome of the debate on the definition of "superpower" outlined above.)

Examples of both (ignoring the powered vs. non-powered non-human distinction) categories would be the gem's effects on Skye, a superpowered human (after she went through the transformation, or possibly even before as she had latent superpower genetics from birth, apparently), and its effects on Thor, an Asgardian. If the powered-nonpowered alien distinction is considered, then the examples could be Skye (superpowered human), Thor (superpowered alien), and Sif (regular alien).

(Fridge logic: Is Thor superpowered, or are his apparent powers above and beyond the Asgardian physiological norm the result of wielding powerful advanced technology (Mjolnir)? Tony Stark is not really "superpowered", he just has a cool suit. We understand the principles behind the Iron Man armor's operation, so we can say that. We don't understand the principles behind most of Asgardian technology, so for all we know the fact that Thor can fly, control weather, shoot electricity, throw a bus, etc. could be the result of his weilding Mjolnir, which for all we know may be an advanced but purely technological device, basically the Asgardian equivalent of Iron Man. Or maybe not, maybe he's wielding "Odinforce" or some other universal mojo. We just don't know enough science to tell.)