Following the previous question:
I'm writing a robot character with a particular PoV. In the previous question I wanted to talk about sensory data; here I would like to open a wider topic. I know that this risks going into opinion-based territory, but I want to take this chance.
Context: Some of my sentient beings mimic humans (they experience the world as we do; they have a notion of emotions, bonding, and a similar rate of intellect), some others are more close to the classical all-knowing, uncaring AI (extremely analytical, with a purpose, but devoid of emotional intelligence or feeling).
On a middle ground, I have robots. Sentience is one of the themes in my novel, so I'm avoiding black-and-white definition. Some robots can think; some cannot. Some are capable of performing complex tasks, yet are not "sentient", and some have more mundane abilities, yet they have a notion of self.
In this gray scale of various degrees of intelligence, my PoV character has to feel both alive, sentient, relatable and alien, different, and inhuman.
I'm struggling to understand how I could characterize his way of thinking without resorting to cheap tricks. Yet I don't want him to be just a "brain in a metallic body" - as I mentioned, I already have cyborgs and simil-humans. I do not need more.
I'm interested in ways to portray an internal thought process different that the human one. To be fair, this same question could be applied to an alien character with a biology extremely different from our own.
But there lies the question. As a human, I can only think as a human would.
How do you write a PoV and thought processes of something inherently different from a human mind?
Related, in another genre: