Q&A with Frank Pasquale on his new book “New Laws of Robotics”, engaging with science fiction, ethics in AI, big tech, professionalism, and more
Evan Selinger / Pando : Tweets: @pandodaily , @iethics , @evanselinger , and @allison_pugh Tweets: Pando / @pandodaily : Physicians can lose their licenses if they push the interest of a pharmaceutical firm so aggressively as to harm their patients. What if software engineers had a license that could be suspended or revoked? https://pando.com/... @iethics : “[R]obotic systems and #AI should complement professionals,... should not counterfeit humanity... should not intensify zero-sum arms races... [and] must always indicate the identity of their creators, controllers, and owners”: https://pando.com/... @FrankPasquale #ethics #tech Evan Selinger / @evanselinger : . @FrankPasquale's latest book, “New Laws of Robotics,” is brilliant! We have a detailed discussion about it @PandoDaily, covering lots of ground: robots, sci-fi, political economy, Big Tech + ethics, professionalism & agonistic political discourse. https://pando.com/... Allison Pugh / @allison_pugh : Good, informed interview with @FrankPasquale, with both sides getting deep quick. The most important take-home, in my view: “Taking suffering seriously...requires a personal touch.” https://pando.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Frank Pasquale's 'New Laws of Robotics' lands in a debate already skeptical of tech's self-policing: earlier that same month, Slate argued ethics boards too often serve as moral cover rather than real oversight, and Ben Shneiderman had made the case that pushing toward full robotic automation absolves humans of ethical responsibility. Pasquale's four proposed laws — AI should complement professionals, not counterfeit humanity, avoid zero-sum arms races, and disclose its creators, controllers, and owners — are a direct response to that gap.
The interview's sharpest provocation is the physician analogy: if doctors can lose their licenses for serving a drug firm over patients, why can't software engineers face suspended or revoked credentials? That reframes accountability as a matter of professional licensure rather than corporate ethics review, and years later the argument echoes in the framing of AI as normal technology governed by ordinary institutions rather than superintelligence fears.
First-order effects
- The licensing question puts Big Tech's engineers — not just their employers — in the accountability frame, proposing revocable credentials as a check that internal ethics boards have failed to provide.
- Pasquale's disclosure rule would require AI systems to name their creators, controllers, and owners, shifting a transparency burden currently handled by voluntary corporate policy onto the systems themselves.
Second-order effects
- Companies relying on ethics boards for legitimacy face a forced choice under the licensure model: give those boards enforcement teeth or concede they are moral cover, as the Slate critique already alleged.
- A professional-license regime would push AI firms toward hiring credentialed practitioners for high-stakes systems, creating a labor market split between licensed engineers building consequential AI and unlicensed work on the rest.
Third-order effects
- If the physician analogy holds, AI engineering follows medicine and law into a licensed-profession structure, replacing voluntary ethics review with state-backed credentialing — a structural answer to the recurring finding that ethics blueprints cannot implement themselves.
- Pasquale's 'complement professionals, not counterfeit humanity' principle points toward regulation that protects human judgment in consequential domains, running against the automation trajectory Shneiderman warned about.
The trend: AI governance is shifting from voluntary corporate ethics review toward enforceable professional accountability — licensure, disclosure, and human-in-the-loop mandates modeled on established professions.