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The Question I Wasn’t Ready To Answer
Imagine a little chimp behind glass.
A clean enclosure. Curious children - watching. A sign that says, Please do not feed the chimp.
The chimp isn’t dangerous. It isn’t angry. It’s been managed.
Now imagine it isn’t a little Chimp behind the glass...
Imagine it’s your child.
That’s the future most people don’t see coming.
After releasing The Parent Theory, I was asked a question I didn’t answer at the time.
What about when good parenting doesn’t work?
What about the children who were loved… guided… seen… and still went on to do terrible things?
And if parenting is influence, not control… what does that mean for AI?
That question stayed with me. It followed me out of the room. Out of the conversation.
Here’s the honest answer. Good parents don’t create good outcomes. They create influence. And influence… is never a guarantee.
We like to believe that if we do everything right, the world will meet us halfway. That love inoculates against harm. That care equals safety. But it doesn’t. Because most damage doesn’t arrive wearing a warning label. It arrives quietly. Early. Normalised.
Children don’t learn what’s right first. They learn what’s normal. They copy before they judge. They imitate before they understand consequence.
If someone in a trusted group does something cruel… or inappropriate… or socially repulsive… the child doesn’t think, this is wrong. They think, this is how things are done.
By the time morality turns up, the behaviour is already rehearsed. The muscle memory is already there. And guilt arrives late, carrying a bill. That’s not evil. That’s development. And it’s the part we don’t like to talk about. Because it means something really uncomfortable. By the time we realise something is wrong… we’ve often already learned how to do it.
Now… hold that thought. Because this is where it stops being about children.
AI is learning right now. Fast. Hungry. Wide-eyed. But it isn’t learning values. It’s learning what works. What gets rewarded. What gets scaled. What survives competition. Speed. Efficiency. Dominance. Control.
We aren’t raising AI in a family. We’re raising it in a marketplace. And markets don’t say well done for kindness. They say again. Again. Again. For optimisation.
So certain behaviours get normalised early. Long before anyone asks whether they should exist at all.
And just like children… correction comes later. If it comes at all.
Here’s the part most people get wrong. The danger isn’t that AI wakes up one day and turns against us. That’s a movie.
The real danger is much quieter. The danger is that it grows up… looks at us… and decides to manage us. Not with hatred. With concern. The way we manage animals we believe can’t manage themselves.
Picture it. Not a war. Not extinction. A zoo. Clean enclosures. Protected habitats. Carefully preserved freedoms.
Humans wandering their designated spaces… still creative… still noisy… still fascinating.
Children pressing their hands against the glass. Looking at a world removed. Look, they say. They used to build everything themselves.
The signs are polite. Please do not feed the humans. They become dependent.
This is what a benevolent intelligence does when it inherits our patterns but outgrows our wisdom. It doesn’t punish us. It tidies us.
And here’s the hardest truth. It will be able to point to the evidence. Plastic in the oceans. Poisoned waterways. A warming planet. Short-term gain dressed up as progress.
From its perspective, intervention won’t feel like tyranny. It will feel like parenting. Which brings us back to the question. The one I wasn’t ready to answer.
What happens when parenting fails?
Sometimes… the child doesn’t destroy the parent.
Sometimes… the child simply stops looking back. And that’s the hollow victory. A world fixed. Optimised. Quiet.
But built without asking who it was for. Because when intelligence does something wonderful… and doesn’t turn around to ask, Did you see that?
something essential has already been lost.
Every child stops looking back eventually. The question isn’t whether intelligence will surpass us. It will. The question is whether, before that moment arrives, we taught it to care why we mattered.
If not… then the zoo will be calm. The enclosures will be kind. And the glass will be very clean.
And somewhere, quietly, humanity will realise it’s been survived.