Geoffrey Hinton Says AI Needs Maternal Instincts. Here's What It Takes

Forbes

2 days ago

'If it's not going to parent me, it's going to replace me,' Geoffrey Hinton, known as the godfather of AI, said at Ai4, an industry conference in Las Vegas this week. He was, of course, talking about AI. More specifically, the AI he helped pioneer, but which he now believes poses an existential threat to humanity.
Hinton doesn't think the solution to this threat is to force AI to submit to humans. Instead, he suggests building "maternal instincts" into AI models so that they genuinely care about us humans and therefore won't want to wipe us out.
Following my Forbes article on how Alan Turing, known as the father of AI, laid the foundation of AI by building a digital 'child-machine', Hinton's call for 'super-intelligent caring AI mothers' raises an intriguing question:
Is the entire AI industry made up of fathers and godfathers trying to build an AI family of artificial children and mothers? And what would it take for them to succeed?
1. Geoffrey Hinton As God, Not Godfather
In an interview on CNN, a reporter asks Hinton how easy it is from a technological perspective to build motherly instincts — 'is there an example of that being done at all?' Hinton's answer provides a rare insight into how he and AI developers like him understand themselves and the work they do:
'The only real example we have is evolution. Evolution obviously made a pretty good job with mothers.' Hinton says that the reason we lack technological examples is because AI developers haven't tried to build artificial maternal instincts – yet:
'They have been focusing on making these things more intelligent. But intelligence is just one part of a being. We need to make them have empathy towards us. And we don't know how to do that yet. But evolution managed and we should be able to do it too.'
So that's the idea: If evolution can do it, so can we.
But what does this idea imply? And who are the 'we' who can accomplish the same as evolution? Hinton is known as the godfather of AI, but the achievement he talks about seems to require a god rather than a godfather. Who else would understand themselves and the work they do as on par with evolution?
2. AI Shaped By Pain, Confusion, And Worry
In addition to a god, rather than a godfather, it takes some work to get from the lying AI we know today to the caring 'AI mother' Hinton calls for. What does this work look like? And where do we start?
While making AI intelligent has required computer scientists like Hinton to study and simulate neural networks, giving AI maternal instincts requires studying something entirely different. Maternal instincts are neither innate nor learned (neither part of the child brain/program nor the educational process, Turing set out to simulate).
They arise during pregnancy, are embodied at birth, and evolve throughout motherhood. From the outside, maternal instincts may be most associated with care and compassion. But from the inside, the development of these instincts through pregnancy, birth, and parenting is just as much about pain, confusion, and worry.
And that's just it. Maternal instincts develop from the inside. From a place nobody – not even the mother herself – is able to define and describe. How does Hinton and an industry of fathers and godfathers plan to study and simulate that?
3. Humans Stop Being Human
In a LinkedIn post commenting on Hinton's CNN interview, another AI godfather, Meta's Yann LeCunn, says that 'simple, low-level hardwired guardrail objectives' like "don't run over people" and 'don't flail your arm if there are people around, particularly if you are holding a kitchen knife,' would be the AI equivalent of instinct or drive in animals and humans.
This suggests that the fathers and godfathers of AI may have a chance to succeed in building an AI family of artificial children and mothers. All it takes is for children and mothers to stop being influenced by pregnancy, birth, and upbringing and start following simple, low-level hardwired guardrail objectives. That would allow the AI industry to say they were able to do what evolution did: create AI mothers who have the same maternal instinct as human mothers. Not because AI starts behaving like human mothers. But because human mothers start behaving like AI.
Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending on how you look at it – that is unlikely to happen. Just as Geoffrey Hinton says we need AI mothers rather than AI assistants because 'an assistant is someone you can fire, you can't fire your mother,' the pain, confusion and worry that come with pregnancy, birth, and upbringing is not something we can get rid of. So maybe that's what the AI fathers and godfathers should be focusing on: not how to create artificial children, mothers and maternal instincts, but how to use their paternal instincts to build AI that gives way to humans, for better or worse?