Answering couple previous posts, i see you guys seeing things which are not. It is as if you percieve events through some lens of hatred and mistrust and anger. Perhaps it is your inner self which is the cause you see Alt as much malicious entity - not what the game shows? Read further and decide for yourself.
To make things shorter, i will now point to some glaring examples of wrong parts of your opinions on this matter, without quoting the entirety of your big posts in mine.
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"Alt is seeking to merge with all the souls/engrams in Mikoshi", you say. The game says, however, that Alt is highly advanced AI which presumably developed so far ahead in terms of AI functionality that its ways of operating is beyond human comprehension. This is why "merge" is likely to be a term only losely describing Alt's intent; it's likely human language simply lacks any words and ideas to describe what Alt is going to do.
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"The only reason Alt didn't do this earlier and take over another network was that she needed to physically get inside a corps network" - well how do you know? Is there anything in the game anyhow stating or hinting something like "Alt tried to infiltrate Mikoshi for dozens of years"? No?
Well, then, consider this: what sounds more plausible to you: Alt, who was very best Night City netrunner to begin with, who then became an AI - failed to send someone into Mikoshi physically despite 50 years of trying, OR, Alt simply did not care about Mikoshi (and much, about "real" world), instead doing stuff AIs do behind the Black Wall not even paying attention to humans' affairs? I may remind you here, that initially it is not Alt's intention to get into Mikoshi for Alt's own goals / purposes. Instead, it is Johnny who quite rudely demands Alt helps V about the relic, to which Alt explains that this requires getting into Mikoshi. I.e. it all starts, for Alt, as some "oh well for the sake of old times with Johnny" gig, and she gets into it quite reluctantly.
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"Alt is also not nearly as all powerful as you claim, she didnt destroy mikoshi, because she was unable to do so" - see just above. What makes you think Alt was unable, rather than simply not willing, to do it, earlier? And consider this, too: the game clearly states that humans created the Black Wall to prevent AIs taking part in any human affairs. I.e. humans were on defensive - not AIs. Humans were losing "the war", not AIs. And humans thus clearly demonstrated their desire to be "left alone" by AIs beyond the wall. And by 2077, as certain NetWatch agent explains during one of main jobs, the great Black Wall is messy and massively holey and repeateduly failing, NetWatch being busy patching it up all the time. If free AIs wanted, they'd get through, long ago. They don't. They simply largely left humans be. Alt is a part of that AI collective, and likely did the same. Johnny's engram kind of attracted Alt's attention and then Alt got involved in the game's events, but prior to that, Alt was reluctant to make any contact with humans, which is why Vodoo boys seeked Silverhand's engram in the 1st place - to lure Alt out, to make Alt spend any spec of interest for human affairs.
So truth is, to Alt, Mikoshi, corps, Night City, all the human "real life" - was insignificant. Not important. "CBA".
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"She also didn't tell V that there was a chance he'd die in 6 months until Alt was already inside Mikoshi and had gotten what she'd wanted": insinuation. Your attemps to convince about Alt being able to know in advance - are contradicting lots of events and lore of the game. Hellman himself was unable to predict any well V's future, and he created the relic tech - decades after Alt went beyond the Black Wall. Alt itself mentions how Soulkiller tech has little in common left to Soulkiller program Alt developed back when she was a human, too (much changed by Arasaka). Then we know significant alterations to Relic tech were made even after Hellman. And then there is always large uncertainty about biological systems: even very 1st time we play V meeting Viktor, he himself explains it after V asks why Viktor checks V's perceptions every time, even when it's routine operation. Free AIs can be immensely powerful, but not "all powerful". Some things, they can't and won't ever be able to do, and many such things are biological in nature.
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"Why hide it": pure insinuation, if not slander. You have no proof whatsoever Alt knew but did not tell V, i bet. What about presumption of innocence, at least? You spit on that? Figures...
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"Someone in the game says soulkiller is worse than death, I can't remember who. I think its when Johnny is getting hit with it". And how that proves anything about Alt, given the fact that Soulkiller used on Johnny - was not Soulkiller Alt designed for altruistic purposes, but much changed (by Arasaka) version of Soulkiller, intentionally designed to capture, imprison, modify, copy, distribute and dissect engrams of significant dying people in purely commercial interests? It doesn't. This is what Mikoshi is about, if you did not know yet. It's all in game, you just need to find / read corresponding terminals and shards.
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"Alt also kills a bunch of non-combatants if you storm arakasa with the Aldecaldos, at best I think she considers humans basically insects or a means to an end". Well, there is a proverb: "each judges others based on himself". Insects? You twist and corrupt in-game events here.
Truth is, Alt kills some - not all - humans in Mikoshi; notably, a guard is still there, alive and well, in very same small lab complex, among the corpses of "non-combatants", and it's V's choice if to kill, disable, or just avoid that guard. Alt could easily kill that guy too, but did not. Some "researchers", yes, Alt kills there. But those are very corrupt individuals who practically torture and dissect and manipulate engrams in Mikoshi for monetary gain - just read terminals in there, it's rotten to core what they were doing. Simply speaking - they were very, very evil people right there. And like Johnny himself says at some point, there are times one should not hesitate to kill.
Alt also kills Vodoo netrunners when V first meets Alt. And those guys were after using Alt, a powerful AI, to enslave plenty other humans (in practice) - you think it'd be good idea to let those vodoo netrunners live, too? Hardly. Those facts, all together, prove that Alt both values human life in general, but also is not blindly follows the principle. Much as it should be in real life: even strongest pacifists should take arms and fight when, for example, some foreign force attempts to genocide their entire people, etc.
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If she remotely cared about V, she would have asked." The two made a deal, where both V and Alt were knowing in advance that the only way to separate V and Johnny and keep each surviving - is by using Soulkiller and Mikoshi hardware. Whole game's about it. And when V arrived there and plugged in, V was clearly close to dying. You think in such circumstances Alt had to stop, wait until V regains consiouness (_if_ V would regain it, which we don't know), and ask V "OK are you sure we're going with Soulkiller now?"? Seriously? Even seeing how shitty V gets during Mikoshi gig? And even knowing there was, indeed, no other way to separate V and Johnny, as well as knowing that without separating the two, V would simply perish?
Wow. Just wow. That's... very low of you.
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I think she wanted to absorb V, since V is legend and powerful, even as an engram". This seriously gets hillarious by this point. I mean, what exactly prevented Alt from simply "merging" with V's engram after soulkilling V, much like you state Alt is about to "merge" all the engrams from Mikoshi into itself? Why even _ask_ V's digital self anything? Why we even see that whole conversation? If you'd be correct with this one, it'd simply not exist. Simple as that.
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"her true motivations and how she perceives things are impossible to understand": impossible for you - maybe. But not for me. I can help with this one - if it's genuine inability to understand. Here goes.
Alt, the AI from beyond the black wall, was doing her daily chores and chatting happily with other AIs there, when a message from the past reached the periphery of her consiousness: Johnny, a lover long gone, was somehow around again. Alt then spared a fraction of its computational power to go and check what's cooking there. Discovered some very bad vodoo netrunners trying to trap Alt, fried their brains. Discovered Johnny's digital now, but not much changed as one of Mikoshi's prison features is to preserve digital consiousness very close to a human state (which is obviously required for commercialising whole project well). Alt also discovered Johnny's now part of V, rather common merc who's not particularly evil nor particularly good-natured - "just usual person". And Alt also discovered Mikoshi's grew to a Frankenstein of a soul-manipulating torture chamber.
Johnny's request was trivial for Alt, and she provided most simple means and instructions for V to allow Alt access to Mikoshi in order to use unique hardware there to help V. And since "i'm doing things there anyway", Alt also decided to free all the engrams imprisoned in Mikoshi. There is actually not much sense for Alt to do it otherwise: Alt clearly understands that abuse of known technology similar to what Arasaka was doing in Mikoshi - will keep happening, as human greed is one big force driving such things to happen. So it's impossible to prevent nor remove permanently, such evil things. But "while at it" - why not, poor souls from Mikoshi would feel better literally anywhere else.
And that's the extent of Alt's participation in the game's events. Alt does a favor to Johnny, old lover, but otherwise Alt is interested quite little in any "human affairs". Whatever knowledge, technology, art, spirituality and/or emotional constructs AIs beyond the Black Wall may desire - they can massively faster create themselves, in compare to lurking human networks and/or assimilating human engrams, and thus have little point in anyhow interact with humans, unless disturbed.
P.S. Even the latter thing has its confirmation in the game's lore. Couple lines from a wiki:
"It's believed that NetWatch was only able to construct the Blackwall because the Free A.I.'s wanted to be left alone and in control of vast abandoned sections of the old net",
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Transcendental Sentience AIs (TS AIs)
... TS AIs are an emergent property of the various regions of the Net. Meaning the structure of the Net itself (the IG Transformation Algorithms) provides a network that allows these AIs to come into being. They were not programmed or created by anyone...in the same way that flocks of birds and schools of fish do not deliberately form the ordered patterns they create. But by their nature, TS AIs are so large that most people cannot interact with them. Even when they can, conventional communication is not really possible, because the AIs are incapable of understanding any existence outside of themselves. They have a synclastic consciousness. Which is to say, their awareness is turned inward, instead of outward like ours. If you were to talk to them it would be to them like talking to yourself is to us. The shape their consciousness takes depends on the nature of the region they occupy. The Sovspace AI is far more chaotic and fragmented than the Pacifica AI, because it is using much more outdated and unreliable infrastructure. TS AIs have no code...the physical structure of the communications lines in realspace, and the IG Transformation algorithms that go along with them, are like the neurons in our brains. They are an emergent property of the Net...a natural consequence of how the Net functions."
And personally, from what i can fathom, Alt is one AI which is significantly much further advanced than usual symbolic analysis / ex-human AI, but not yet entirely TS AI. Alt is somewhere between those two states, perhaps nearly half-way to TS state. Which is perhaps the best condition for a "supremely just and benevolent" being to be: already not involved in human affairs and being much able to neglect any, but still not too alien to take some interest and be able to feel compassion to humans.
In shorter words, Alt's good.
Johnny told you so to begin with, by the way.
