Can you sell your starting colonist, do you need to be given them weapons ?
Basicly a MAI is full functional pawn like your others. If you want that they want to shoot they need a weapon. Sure they have some better mellee attack the humans, but good mellee weapons can't hurt either.
MAI got better basic protections then human, so they don't need to wear any clothings, so you can't get boni from these anymore.