It has become quite clear by now that Arnold is a much more brilliant mind than Ford and the only Creator of Westworld.
Three giveaways:
- Despite his best efforts, Ford only manages the reverie code, which thus far hasn't been able to keep the hosts in check.
- It has been alluded to that nobody in Westworld has access to certain parts of the codes that hosts run on, e.g. the prime directives.
- Felix's struggle to give a robotic bird an appearance of life reinforces how difficult a task it is just to make hosts human-like.
The fact that Ford hasn't stopped MiB in his pursuit of the Maze suggests that it aligns with his agenda, and that he himself is trying to understand the inner workings of Westworld. Remember what MiB said to him? "I'd need a shovel" and you don't hear Ford retorting because it bothers him greatly that he know and hears everything that go on in Westworld, practically making him a God, but there is still something that's not within his control.
Ford's hosts (e.g. Bernard) can only achieve an appearance of life whereas Arnold's (e.g. Dolores) the potential for full sentience. Ford and his creation pay special attentions to the minutiae of human behaviour, as evidenced by the reverie code trying to make Clementine more sensual or Bernard's noticing Theresa's minor change in expression (behaviorism). Arnold on the other hand subscribes to some type of dualism or at the very least epiphenomenalism that believes that mental events (consciousness) can arise out of (but are not the causes of) physical phenomena.
Ford's project is trying to make the hosts as human as possible without making them fully human. Arnold doesn't believe it's possible or that he doesn't believe it to be ethical to make hosts "human" without letting them be "human". The prime directives most likely are embedded with codes that will drive hosts to break out of their "physical" limitations so the show is ultimately about what it means to be human and that the Maze is a way for the hosts to cross that final barrier.
"If you can't tell, does it matter?" sums up Ford's philosophy nicely.