China's Next Market Movers: What Investors Should Watch
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
29 minutes ago
- Forbes
Godfather Of AI Says We Need Maternal AI But Ignites Sparks Over Omission Of Fatherly Instincts Too
In today's column, I examine the recent remarks by the said-to-be 'Godfather of AI' that the best way to ensure that AI and ultimately artificial general intelligence (AGI) and artificial superintelligence (ASI) are in check and won't wipe out humankind would be to instill maternal instincts into AI. The idea is that maybe we could computationally sway current AI towards being motherly. This would hopefully remain intact as a keystone while we increasingly improve contemporary AI toward becoming the vaunted AGI and ASI. Although this seems to be an intriguing proposition, it has come under withering criticism from others in the AI community. Let's talk about it. This analysis of AI breakthroughs is part of my ongoing Forbes column coverage on the latest in AI, including identifying and explaining various impactful AI complexities (see the link here). Aligning AI With Humanity You might be aware that a longstanding research scientist in the AI community, named Geoffrey Hinton, has been credited with various AI breakthroughs, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been generally labeled as the 'Godfather of AI' for his avid pursuits and accomplishments in the AI field. In fact, he is a Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist for his AI insights. In 2023, he left his executive position at Google so that he (per his own words) could speak freely about AI risks. Many noteworthy quotes of his are utilized by the media to forewarn about the coming dangers of pinnacle AI, when or if we reach AGI and ASI. There is a lot of back-and-forth nowadays regarding the existential risk of AI. Some refer to this as the p(doom), meaning that there is a probability of doom arising due to AI, for which you can either guess that the probability is low, medium, or high. For those who place a high probability on this weighty matter, they usually assert that AI will either choose to kill us all or perhaps completely enslave us. How are we to somehow avoid or at least mitigate this seemingly outsized risk? One approach entails trying to data train AI to be more aligned with human values, see my detailed discussion on human-centered AI at the link here. The hope is that if AI is more appreciative of humanity and computationally infused with our ethical and moral values, the AI might opt not to harm us. Another similar approach involves making sure that AI embodies principles such as the famous Asimov laws of robotics (see my explanation at the link here). A rule of Asimov is that AI isn't supposed to harm humans. Period, end of story. Whether those methods or any other of the floating around schemes will save us is utterly unknown. We are pretty much hanging in the wind. Good luck, humanity, since we will need to keep our fingers crossed and our lucky rabbit's foot in hand. For more about the ins and outs of AI existential risk, see my coverage at the link here. AI With Maternal Instincts At the annual Ai4 Conference on August 12, 2025, Hinton proclaimed that the means to shape AI toward being less likely to be gloomily onerous would be to instill computational 'maternal instincts' into AI. His notion seems to be that by tilting AI toward being motherly, the AI will care about people in a motherly fashion. He emphasized that it is unclear exactly how this might technologically be done. In any case, according to his hypothesized solution, AI that is infused with mother-like characteristics will tend to be protective of humans. How so? Well, first of all, the AGI and ASI will be much smarter than us, and, secondly, by acting in a motherly role, the AI will devotedly want to care for us as though we are its children. The AI will want to embrace its presumed offspring and ensure our survival. You might go so far as to believe that this motherly AI will guide us toward thriving as a species. AGI and ASI that robustly embrace motherly instincts might ensure that we would have tremendous longevity and enjoyable, upbeat lives. No longer would we be under the daunting specter of doom and gloom. Our AI-as-mom will be our devout protector and lovingly inspire us to new heights. Boom, drop the mic. Lopsided Maternal Emphasis Now that I've got that whole premise on the table, let's go ahead and give it a bit of a look-see. One of the most immediate reactions has been that the claim of 'maternal instincts' is overly rosy and nearly romanticized. The portrayal appears to suggest that motherly attributes are solely within the realm of being loving, caring, comforting, protective, sheltering, and so on. All of those are absolutely positive and altogether wonderful qualities. No doubt about it. Those are the stuff made of grand dreams. Is that the only side of the coin when it comes to maternal instincts? A somewhat widened perspective would say that maternal instincts can equally contain disconcerting ingredients. Consider this. Suppose that a motherly AI determines that humans are being too risky and the best way to save humankind is to keep us cooped up. No need for us to try and venture out into outer space or try to figure out the meaning of life. Those are dangers that might disrupt or harm us. Voila, AI-as-mom computationally opts to bottle us up. Is the AI doggedly being evil? Not exactly. The AI is exercising a parental preference. It is striving mightily to protect us from ourselves. You might say that motherly AI would take away our freedoms to save us, doing so for our own darned good. Thank you, AI-as-mom! Worries About Archetypes I assume that you can plainly observe that maternal instincts are not exclusively in the realm of being unerringly good. Another illustrative example would be that AI-as-mom will withdraw its affection toward us if we choose to be disobedient. A mother might do the same toward a child. I'm not suggesting that's a proper thing to do in real life, and only pointing out that the underlying concept of 'maternal instinct' is generally vague and widely interpretable. Thus, even if we could imbue motherly tendencies into AI, the manner in which those instincts are exhibited and play out might be quite far from our desired idealizations. Speaking of which, another major point of concern is that the use of a maternal archetype is wrong at the get-go. Here's what that means. The moment you invoke a motherly classification, you have landed squarely into an anthropomorphism of AI. We are applying norms and expectations associated with humans to the arena of AI. That's generally a bad idea. I've discussed at length that people are gradually starting to think that AI is sentient and exists on par with humans, see my discussion at the link here. They are wrong. Utterly wrong. It would seem that this assigning of 'mother' to AI is going to fuel that misconception about AI. We don't need that. The act of discussing AI as having maternal instincts, especially by anyone or those considered in great authority about AI, will draw many others into a false and undercutting path. They will undoubtedly follow the claims made by presumed experts and not openly question the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the matter. Though the intentions are aboveboard, the result is dismal and, frankly, disappointing. More On The Archetypes Angst Let's keep pounding away at the archetype fallacy. Some would say that the very conception of being 'motherly' is an outdated mode of thinking. Why should there be a category that myopically carries particular attributes associated with motherhood? Can't a mother have characteristics outside of that culturally narrowed scope? They quickly reject the maternal instincts proposition on the basis that it is incorrect or certainly a poorly chosen premise. The attempt seems to be shaped in a close-minded viewpoint of what mothers do. And what mothers are seemingly allowed to do. That's ancient times, some would insist. An additional interesting twist is that if the maternal instinct is on the table, it would seem eminently logical to also put the fatherhood instinct up there, too. Allow me to elaborate. Fatherhood Enters The Picture By and large, motherhood and fatherhood are archetypes that are historically portrayed as a type of pairing (in modern times, this might be blurred, but historically they have been rather distinctive and contrastive). According to the conventional archetypes, the 'traditional' mother is (for example) supposedly nurturing, while the 'traditional' father is supposedly (for example) more of the disciplinarian. A research study cleverly devised two sets of scales associated with these traditional perspectives of motherhood and fatherhood. The paper entitled 'Scales for Measuring College Student Views of Traditional Motherhood and Fatherhood' by Mark Whatley and David Knox, College Student Journal, January 2005, made these salient points (excerpts): The combined 153 declarative statements included in the two scales allow research experiments to be conducted to gauge whether subjects in a study are more prone to believe in those traditional characteristics and associated labels, or less prone. Moving beyond that prior study, the emphasis here and now is that if there is to be a focus on maternal instincts for AI, doing so seems to beg the question of why it should not also encompass fatherhood instincts. Might as well go ahead and get both of the traditional archetypes into the game. It would seem to make sense to jump in with both feet. What AI Has To Say On This I had earlier mentioned that Hinton did not specify a technological indication at this time of how AI developers might proceed to computationally imbue motherhood characteristics into existing AI. The same lack of specificity applies to the omitted archetype of imbuing fatherhood into AI. Let's noodle on that technological conundrum. One approach would be to data train AI toward a tendency to respond in a traditional motherhood frame and/or a fatherhood frame. In other words, perform some RAG (retrieval-augmented generation), see my explanation of RAG at the link here, and make use of customized instructions (see my coverage of customized instructions at the link here). I went ahead and did so, opting to use the latest-and-greatest of OpenAI, namely the newly released GPT-5 (for my review of GPT-5, see the link here). I first focused on maternal instincts. After doing a dialogue in that frame, I started anew and devised a fatherhood frame. I then did a dialogue in that frame. Let's see how things turned out. Talking Up A Storm Here's an example of a dialogue snippet of said-to-be maternal instincts: Next, here's an example of a dialogue snippet of said-to-be fatherhood instincts: I assume that you can detect the wording and tonal differences between the two instances, based on a considered traditional motherhood frame versus a traditional fatherhood frame. The Big Picture I would wager that the consensus among those AI colleagues that I know is that relying on AI having maternal instincts as a solution to our existential risk from AI, assuming we can get the AI to go maternal, just isn't going to cut the mustard. The same applies to the fatherhood inclination. No dice. Sorry to say that what seems like a silver bullet and otherwise appealing and simplistic means of getting ourselves out of a massive jam when it comes to AGI and ASI is not a likely proposition. Sure, it might potentially be helpful. At the same time, it has lots of gotchas and untoward repercussions. Do not bet your bottom dollar on the premise. A final comment for now. During the data training for my mini-experiment, I included this famous quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: 'Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.' Do you think that the AI suitably instills that wise adage? As a seasoned parent, I would venture that this maxim missed the honed parental guise of the AI.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
US Stock market correction 2025: a hidden opportunity to build a £1m ISA?
With the US stock market once again reaching new all-time highs, many portfolios have enjoyed wonderful returns in 2025. Yet, while that's obviously exciting, there's a brewing concern of a potential correction approaching later this year. After all, recent US economic data is starting to look a bit wobbly as the potential impact of tariffs starts to materialise. But could this be a rare opportunity to accelerate the journey towards reaching a £1m investment portfolio? What's going on? Even when stripping out volatile food and energy prices, US inflation's slowly ticking back up. Yet at the same time, the latest revisions to the US jobs report show signs of an economy slowing down. And higher prices combined with slower economic growth are an early indicator of potential stagflation. That puts the Federal Reserve in a pretty sticky situation. Cutting interest rates will cause inflation to rise, while keeping them elevated might cause a further slowdown in economic growth. Pairing this with elevated stock market valuations points towards a looming correction if economic growth doesn't rebound. There's no way of knowing the exact timing of the next stock market correction, but current consensus from analysts at Morgan Stanley suggests it could arrive as early as the third quarter of 2025. Profiting from volatility Stock market corrections are a natural part of every investment journey. And while they can be unpleasant to suffer, they can provide some lucrative buying opportunities for prudent long-term investors, even for typically less volatile enterprises. Take Mastercard (NYSE:MA) as an example. In the 2022 stock market correction, the payment processing giant saw its market-cap shrink by as much as 20%. That's obviously a significant change of pace compared to the stock's typical growth trajectory. However, while most investors were selling off shares, the few that used this volatility to buy at a discount have since gone on to double their money since October 2022. And this perfectly demonstrates how using a market correction can pave the way for impressive market-beating returns for patient long-term investors. Could Mastercard win again? Let's assume the worst, and say that the US stock market takes another tumble on the back of an economic slowdown. Weaker consumer spending will likely translate into lower transaction volumes for Mastercard, likely sparking some selling activity from short-term focused investors. However, as demonstrated countless times before, consumers are relying more and more on debit and credit cards to do their shopping. And that will likely enable transaction volumes to steadily recover alongside the economy. What's more, roughly two-thirds of Mastercard's payment volumes actually come from outside the US, where economic concerns are less prominent. Of course, that doesn't make Mastercard a guaranteed winner. With so much of the global market already under its belt, and tough competition emerging from China, long-term growth expectations are already starting to moderate. And with rising competition from novel fintech payment solutions, the group's duopoly with Visa could already be getting attacked. Nevertheless, management isn't blind to these risks. And with an impressive track record of navigating through economic storms, as well as fending off potential disruptors, Mastercard shares could still be worth a closer look if the US stock market indeed decides to throw a tantrum in the future. The post US Stock market correction 2025: a hidden opportunity to build a £1m ISA? appeared first on The Motley Fool UK. More reading 5 Stocks For Trying To Build Wealth After 50 One Top Growth Stock from the Motley Fool Zaven Boyrazian has positions in Mastercard. The Motley Fool UK has recommended Mastercard. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. Motley Fool UK 2025 Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Hot Inflation Clouds Fed Path, But Crypto Bulls Eye Q4 Liquidity Surge
A hotter-than-expected U.S. wholesale inflation reading has tempered optimism for a September interest-rate cut, but some analysts say the pullback in crypto could be short-lived as liquidity tailwinds build into year-end. The Producer Price Index rose 0.9% in July, its largest monthly gain in more than three years, with core PPI matching that pace. The data prompted traders to scale back bets on imminent Federal Reserve easing, pressuring Bitcoin and Ethereum from recent highs. Bitcoin is down 4.2% to $118,200 on the day while Ethereum has slipped 3% to 4,570, CoinGecko data shows. 'The recent pullback in crypto prices following a hotter-than-forecast reading on core PPI seems to have shaken broader confidence in a Fed rate cut next month,' Thomas Perfumo, Kraken's global economist, told Decrypt. 'Fundamentally, elevated inflation continues to underscore the long-term appeal of crypto assets with fixed or programmatic supply, which are structurally better positioned to preserve, and even grow in value.' The most prominent example is Bitcoin, which has a fixed supply capped at 21 million coins. What Treasury Secretary Bessent's Call for a 50bps Cut in September Could Mean for Crypto Jamie Coutts, chief crypto analyst at Real Vision, said the macro backdrop is breaking from historical cycles, with inflation unlikely to be 'easily tamed' and policymakers exploring unconventional tools such as targeted Treasury issuance or yield-curve control. 'Short-term, this looks bullish, but without sustained growth, it could end disastrously,' he said. Coutts expects seasonal weakness in September but sees rising global liquidity, driven by Chinese stimulus measures and a weaker U.S. dollar, supporting a rally in the fourth quarter. Why XRP Is Dumping While Cardano Is Pumping: Analysis Bitcoin has fallen in six of the past 10 Septembers, with a median decline of about 4.35%, according to CoinGlass data, but those dips have often set up strong year-end rallies. Coutts has often noted that shifts in liquidity, whether expanding or contracting, tend to move in step with the rise and fall of risk-asset valuations, as seen during the pandemic-era market rally of 2020–2021. For now, the PPI shock has reined in aggressive rate-cut bets. But if liquidity flows hold and the dollar continues to soften, crypto's late-summer lull could give way to a renewed push higher before year-end. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
