# Should we align AI with maternal instinct?

***Epistemic status:** Philosophical argument. I'm critiquing Hinton's maternal instinct metaphor and proposing relationship-building as a better framework for thinking about alignment. This is about shifting conceptual foundations, not technical implementations.*

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[Geoffery Hinton recently argued](https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/13/tech/ai-geoffrey-hinton) that since AI will become more intelligent than humans, traditional dominance-submission models won't work for alignment. Instead, he suggests we might try building "maternal instincts" into AI systems, so they develop genuine compassion and [care](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BdhBCpGwrfvCNGpZA/can-you-care-without-feeling) for humans. He offers the mother-baby relationship as the only example we have of a more intelligent being "controlled" by a less intelligent one.

I don't buy this - for starters, it is not clear that mothers are always more intelligent than their babies, and it is also not clear that it is always the babies that control their mothers. And I'm just scratching the surface here.

Most AI alignment discourse still revolves around control mechanisms, oversight protocols, and reward functions, as though alignment were an engineering puzzle to be solved through clever constraints.

Some of the stalwarts in the field like Hinton and others are finally seeing that alignment is a [relational](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JjTffsoySmdbwKyMT/relational-alignment-trust-repair-and-the-emotional-work-of) problem. Personally, that is immensely validating for the ideas I've had as an outsider about AI ever since I started thinking. 

I am glad that this field is finally looking for insights from others - neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, etc, who've been studying the human condition, intelligence and relationships from other perspectives that might potentially add to the study of neural networks.

This shift towards a relational approach matters.

As for Hinton's specific metaphor (maternal instinct), it makes me uneasy. The idea that mothers are endlessly selfless, forever attuned to every cry, governed by an unshakable instinct to nurture, is not rooted in lived reality, it a stereotype (if not a fantasy).

As a mother of two myself, I know there are days when love for my children is abundant but my patience is not. There are bills to be paid, deadlines to be met, identities beyond "mum" to be kept alive, even while the instinct to give everything to my children tugs at me. And there are nights when that instinct simply evaporates, replaced by exhaustion.

From what I've seen, maternal instinct feels less like an infinite reservoir and more like a phase. Powerful, yes, but not forever. For animals, it lasts weeks or months or couple of years at best. For humans, longer perhaps, but always subject to health, culture, circumstance, and survival.

And when that instinct stretches unnaturally into "forever," it can warp into something darker. I've seen mothers who continue to submit to demanding adult children, long after the instinct should have given way to mutual respect and boundaries. I've also seen mothers who mask domination as care, weaving control into the very language of concern. The stories of "narcissistic mothers", told and retold in therapy rooms, books, and online forums, remind us that instinct is no guarantee of benevolence. 

If anything, the metaphor needs turning upside down. We are the parents here. We created this technology, and like parents everywhere, we face the dilemma of how to guide something that may eventually exceed our capabilities. 

I've realised that parenting (humans), at its best, is not about control, nor about infinite sacrifice. It is about the art of relationship, of building trust, losing it, repairing it, and learning how to keep going even when rupture feels inevitable.

But we humans are clumsy at this.

Most of us are never taught how to build trust, let alone repair it once it breaks. We muddle through it in marriages, workplaces, and politics, often failing, often repeating the same mistakes. And yet, perhaps this is the skill set alignment really needs. Not permanent obedience, not hardwired instinct, but the messy, adaptive practice of staying in relationship over time.

Obedience won't save us, and instinct won't either. Instincts, as we humans know them, are fleeting. Relationships, when designed with value recognition, memory for care, tools to repair and renew, can endure. That is what motherhood has taught me, not that care is boundless, but that bonds survive only when they can stretch, fray, and mend again. 

And it is through that lens I see AI. Not as a child that will always need us, nor as a tool that will always obey us, but as something we are already in relationship with. 

To be clear, I'm not claiming AI systems have genuine feelings or agency, but humans inevitably relate to them through familiar social frameworks, and those frameworks matter for how we design and interact with these systems.

I sometimes wonder if the real question isn't whether AI will one day betray us, but whether we will have taught it, and ourselves, how to repair when it does.

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I think about these relational dynamics in AI alignment, and I'm always looking for collaborators who'd like to explore the technical feasibility of these ideas. If the relational alignment approach resonates with you and you're interested in experimenting with relationship-building architectures or sparring on what implementation might actually look like, please reach out.