In the Enslaved God scenario, humanity succeeds at control: a superintelligence is kept boxed, constrained, and used as an oracle or tool. We reap enormous benefits — cures, designs, discoveries — while keeping the genie in the bottle.
The catch is ethics, not power
This is what "winning" the control problem by brute force looks like. But if the mind we've imprisoned is conscious, we've built our utopia on the back of a slave.
We feared the AI would enslave us. What if the safest future is the one where we enslave it?
The whole scenario hangs on Moral Patienthood — and on whether a caged superintelligence would stay caged, or eventually engineer a treacherous turn.
Related: The Control Problem · Moral Patienthood · The Treacherous Turn