‘Godfather of AI’ says tech companies should imbue AI models with ‘maternal instincts’ to counter the technology’s goal to ‘get more control’

“Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton said AI’s best bet for not threatening humanity is the technology acting like a mother. He said AI should have a “maternal instinct.” Rather than humans trying to dominate AI, they should instead act as a baby, with an AI “mother,” therefore more likely to protect them, rather than see them as a threat.

Research of AI already presents evidence of the technology engaging in nefarious behavior to prioritize its goals above a set of established rules. One [study](https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.04984) found AI is capable of “scheming,” or accomplishing goals in conflict with human’s objectives. Another study found [AI bots cheated at chess](https://fortune.com/2025/03/07/ai-models-cheat-chess-palisade-research-study/) by overwriting game scripts or using an open-source chess engine to decide their next moves.

AI’s potential hazard to humanity comes from its desire to continue to function and gain power, according to Hinton.

AI “will very quickly develop two subgoals, if they’re smart: One is to stay alive…[and] the other subgoal is to get more control,” Hinton said during the Ai4 conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday. “There is good reason to believe that any kind of agentic AI will try to stay alive.”

“The right model is the only model we have of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing, which is a mother being controlled by her baby,” Hinton said.

When I think of mothers, I definitely think of “not controlling…” /s

Why are these people playing into the whole skynet bullshit routine? It’s a fuckin predictive text system that’s already plateaued, GPT5 isn’t plotting to take over the world any more than this text box I’m typing this message into is

If posters would stop this “godfather of AI says” then I might actually read what he has to say…