Ai's never research ethics, also they dont research soldiering tree (after planetary invasion ) diplomacy techs, influence techs, and sensors. At least they didnt in ~30 huge/large galaxy games i played (on all difficulties including masochistic)

Yes, they do too research the Ethics branch, as well as soldering. I have seen them do it.

You do not need to spy to keep an eye on their alignments. That info is always there. I very seldom will put money into espionage. I think it is a waste unless I want to look directly at their worlds. I can tell from the ships they are building what tech level they are at, and at their alignment to see if they are likely to have those particular weapons.

But I have seen several that have aligned by mid game or late game. So they have to be researching it.
And I sometimes come up on a race that has over 100 soldering when I attack their world, And that means they have at least Space Marines if not Shock Troops.

After I posted this question, I start my saved game and did just as Achronous suggested, I gave away Xeno Ethics to all the other races and the turn after that, their alignments were set, Dregin now is evil and Iconians (or something like that) is now good. Seems strange they don't research it themselves, maybe it's because I'm at normal differiculty.

PS: In my original post up top, I made a mistake, the screen actually said NO ALIGNMENT (Leaning toward evil), not Neutral.

Happy conquering and a good weekend to all

I've seen the AI build NLCs so that means they must have researched Xeno Ethics. However I don't think they research it below Challenging, haven't played a game on normal for a while, but I seem to remember that they didn't!
Happy Hunting

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They give it a very low priority, but eventually they will research it, if the game drags on long enough.