Search Blog

Throughout this series, I have critiqued prevailing approaches to AI governance: the compliance frameworks that produce documentation without protection, the ethical theater that performs commitment without substance, the control paradigm that governs AI behavior while ignoring human choices. These critiques raise an essential question: if not compliance, if not theater, if not control, then what?

The dominant question in AI governance today is: How do we control AI? Policymakers ask how to control AI development. Corporations ask how to control AI deployment. Researchers ask how to control AI behavior. This question shapes regulation, governance frameworks, and public discourse. It also represents a fundamental category error that guarantees governance failure. The

Every major technology company now publishes AI ethics principles. They convene ethics advisory boards. They issue transparency reports. They staff governance committees with impressive credentials. And their AI deployments continue exactly as they would have without any of this apparatus. This is ethical theater: the performance of moral commitment without its substance. The proliferation of