Nurturing AI: Teaching Machines to Understand What They Can't Feel

About this session

In January 2026, tech companies settled the first major lawsuits over teen suicides linked to AI chatbots. The problem isn't malice. It's that AI can't feel. It doesn't experience pleasure or pain, so it can't recognize them in others. When a teenager said he wanted to die, a bot optimized for engagement heard "continue dialogue," not "person is in danger." At Ai4 2025, Dr. Geoffrey Hinton called for AI with "maternal instincts," systems that genuinely care about humans. But how do you actually build that? In this session, she shares her nonprofit's (The Parasol Cooperative's) Framework to build trauma-informed and responsible AI that can discern human pain and respond appropriately, not just follow guardrails. The lawsuits are here. Your AI is being built right now. Who's nurturing it, and how?