I created an AI empire with Synthetic NI. And holy crap they are OP. Not only it starts the game with synthetic pops that can colonize all planets, they also get the "blue buffs" which are researchable techs right from the start.

Also, why is Synthetic NI trait has -90% food when all pops are synthetics?

I would propose starting pops to be cybernetic instead of synthetic, and with probably less penalty to food, among other balance changes.

The blue buffs shouldn't be researchable from the start... those also are vastly OP compare to gene and robo modding.