A new control problem? Humanoid robots, artificial intelligence, and the value of control

The control problem related to robots and AI usually discussed is that we might lose control over advanced technologies. When authors like Nick Bostrom and Stuart Russell discuss this control problem, they write in a way that suggests that having as much control as possible is good while losing control is bad. In life in general, however, not all forms of control are unambiguously positive and unproblematic. Some forms—e.g. control over other persons—are ethically problematic. Other forms of control are positive, and perhaps even intrinsically good. For example, one form of control that many philosophers have argued is intrinsically good and a virtue is self-control. In this paper, I relate these questions about control and its value to different forms of robots and AI more generally. I argue that the more robots are made to resemble human beings, the more problematic it becomes—at least symbolically speaking—to want to exercise full control over these robots. After all, it is unethical for one human being to want to fully control another human being. Accordingly, it might be seen as problematic—viz. as representing something intrinsically bad—to want to create humanoid robots that we exercise complete control over. In contrast, if there are forms of AI such that control over them can be seen as a form of self-control, then this might be seen as a virtuous form of control. The “new control problem”, as I call it, is the question of under what circumstances retaining and exercising complete control over robots and AI is unambiguously ethically good.