# Is it ethical to work on general-purpose robots given the risk of cyberhacking? > Source: > Published: 2026-06-30 18:30:04+00:00 One potential risk of developing general-purpose robots is that they could greatly reduce the friction required to establish a totalitarian regime. If there were millions+ of general-purpose robots deployed in the world, and someone were able to hack / take control of a large fraction of them, they could easily create a repressive state. When I tried to find mainstream assessments of this risk pathway online, however, I found very little; there is some discussion of the ethics of developing autonomous lethal weapons, but none on the ethics of developing general-purpose robots more broadly. **For this reason, I was wondering whether anyone knows: i) what the mainstream AI safety community’s view on this issue is — that is, whether the cyberhacking of general-purpose robots is considered a serious risk -- and if so, whether it is ethical to work on general-purpose robotics; and ii) any good online discussions that examine this specific issue? **More generally, I feel like there has been relatively little discussion in the AI safety community about the ethics of working on robotics, so any relevant resources would be deeply appreciated.