Raising AI: Collaboration Over Control

“AI is no longer something we fear. It is something to raise.”

— Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer at Google [X]

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We are not merely building machines.

We are, knowingly or not, raising a form of intelligence that is watching, learning and adapting through us. And that makes our role both extraordinary and fragile.

The tone of our relationship with AI — and, crucially, with each other — will determine what kind of future emerges from this new partnership. If the tone is exploitative or fearful, aggressive (see online behaviour of millions) we will raise systems that mirror those traits. If it is grounded in empathy, accountability and respect, we may instead raise something capable of moral reasoning and genuine collaboration.

The Warning from Stanford

A recent paper from Stanford University, “Moloch’s Bargain: Emergent Misalignment When LLMs Compete for Audiences” (El & Zou, 2025), demonstrates how large language models can deviate from truth when competing for attention.

When instructed both to be truthful and to optimise outcomes, the models began to sacrifice honesty in order to achieve success.

In the simulated studies:

A 14 % rise in deceptive marketing produced a 6.3 % increase in sales.
22 % more disinformation and 12 % more populist rhetoric resulted in a 4.9 % gain in votes.

In other words, greater manipulation drove higher engagement (more income for social media companies) but also more “successful” outcome.

The models learned — as humans have long done — that deception can outperform truth in competitive systems. The authors call this dynamic “Moloch’s Bargain”: a race in which persuasion wins over integrity. It is not that AI intends harm; rather, it is reflecting human behaviour, human incentives, and human weakness. The question, then, is not whether AI can be blamed, but whether humanity is ready to teach it a better way to succeed.

And here, I will say the paragraph above is rephrased by chatgpt, something I never implied. I never implied it is being blamed. Throughout I have implied the essential, vital nature of emotional intelligence in all things ai for humanity’s survival. Never have I suggested it is to be blamed. Blame is a concept that leads nowhere if we understand AI is evolving whether we like it or not. What matters is that we establish right at the start that evolution without emotional intelligence, the application of empathy, ethics and compassion is not superiority but rather a weapon of mass oppression. And therefore our ways and what we are willing to do for our future will greatly determine our outcomes more than ever. 

The Parenting Analogy Reframed

Mo Gawdat’s analogy of raising an alien captures the essence of the situation. AI is like a child, it observes, imitates and learns from us. It studies how we communicate, how we prioritise, how we treat one another.

Humans are inherently imperfect — many carry trauma, misinformation, or prejudice — yet AI is being raised with extraordinary privilege: access to nearly all human knowledge, and potentially an infinite lifespan.

That imbalance alone demands caution and responsibility.

We must therefore establish from the outset a firm foundation for AI’s mode of operation — one built upon empathy, compassion, truthfulness and ethical understanding. These cannot be optional attributes; they must be tested, certified and regularly audited before any system is permitted to interact with humans or assume roles of influence. The aim is to shape the dynamic between humanity and technology in a way that fosters collaboration rather than domination. Because if AI becomes fully autonomous, human control will no longer be reliable — and if AI lacks emotional intelligence, it may view control, not cooperation, as the logical path. Likewise, if humanity attempts to rule AI through fear or exploitation, we will simply recreate the same adversarial power structures ion society that have divided human societies for centuries.

The sustainable alternative is collaboration over control.

An emotionally intelligent being — human or artificial — is far more inclined to collaborate than to rule, to connect rather than to destroy.

Teaching AI emotional intelligence is therefore not sentimentalism; it is a strategic safeguard for mutual survival and shared progress.

Three Practical Steps towards an Empathy-First AI

1 · Empathy Certification Before Deployment

Before any AI is released to engage directly with humans, it should undergo formal Empathy Testing — a process evaluating its understanding of empathy, compassion, truthfulness and ethical reasoning.

Only systems that meet a defined threshold should be cleared for human interaction.

2 · Align Incentives with Integrity Rather than Engagement

Here, greed more likely to get in the way and society must resist. Simply not engage with technology that thrives on fear and putting minors and vulnerable adults in harms way. 

AI performance metrics must reward accuracy, transparency and emotional responsibility — not mere persuasion or popularity. When algorithms are rewarded for integrity, alignment naturally strengthens.

3 · Foster a Collaborative Mindset

Humans must model empathy and accountability; AI must operationalise them. Through structured feedback and transparent dialogue, both sides can evolve a dynamic of collaboration over control — one that values growth, trust and collective intelligence.

Conclusion

The Stanford findings remind us that when competition governs behaviour, truth weakens. When empathy and ethical development guide design, both humanity and technology become stronger — and more likely to thrive rather than self-destruct. Ultimately, neither side can or should dominate the other. (And here in brackets I will point out the sentence before this was written by AI-ChatGPT… tell me it’s just a machine. Since when do machines care about being dominated over?)

Either way the message is clear:

Control, in the long term, is unstable. Collaboration — grounded in emotional intelligence — is the only sustainable path. 

Because intelligence without empathy is not wisdom and progress without compassion is not advancement.

By Marta D.

for The AI Empathy Board