In "A Closed and Common Orbit," why has Sidra been put in a human body?

Question

Becky Chambers's A Closed and Common Orbit is a sequel, more or less, to her The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. In that book,

Jenks and Pepper, illegally and with difficulty, obtain a human-like body to put the ship's AI Lovelace in. Then Lovelace is reset, losing her memories and personality and becoming, essentially, a different person. Jenks's friends want to get Lovelace off the ship to avoid tormenting Jenks.

In A Closed and Common Orbit, Lovelace (later called Sidra) is in a human-like body. Since the circumstances are changed so much, why has she still been put in this body--which causes lots of difficulties, being illegal--a secret that must be hidden--and is difficult to adjust to? Was it just because Jenks and Pepper had spent so much money and gone to so much trouble, and had the body lying around? Were

Jenks's friends

in such a hurry to get Lovelace off the ship they couldn't wait a little for a legal solution? Couldn't Lovelace be put in a shuttlecraft or a hard drive or something?

Answer 1

Because the only other option was uninstalling Lovelace 2.0 (aka Sidra):

"No Lovelace, no, no. That wouldn't be fair to you, or healthy for him. What Jenks needs is to grieve and move on. And that's going to be really hard for him to do with your voice coming through the voxes every day."

"Oh." Lovelace could see where this was going. "You want to uninstall me."

They were in a position where there were basically three options:

1. Lovelace stayed as the ship's AI - "you can stay here if you want to. [...] I may be wrong. He may be able to handle working with you."
2. She is uninstalled.
3. She leaves the ship somehow.

The first one, Lovelace 2.0 chooses against - "she couldn't stay here if it meant that she was making this man's pain worse" (she watches Jenks grieving through the cameras).

The second one, Pepper will not allow - "We're not going to kill you just because you're not the same as your previous installation."

The third one could at that time be only handled in one way - through the illegal body. Jenks told Pepper "'To hold on to the kit for him'", and Pepper obviously had no use for it. It was the most convenient thing at hand. On top of this, Pepper "could use an assistant" in her shop. Finally, this is Pepper - she believes that AIs are sapient, basically human. So this seems like a reasonable step.

She's not in a rush though - Pepper says she's "in no rush" and that it'll take her a day or two to get the kit and bring it back. And Lovelace could stay on the ship. But a hard drive wouldn't allow Lovelace to interact with her environment. Nobody's got a shuttle but Pepper, and Pepper's shuttle already has an AI, I believe. This was just the easiest default solution.