cd /news/artificial-intelligence/could-we-have-another-family · home topics artificial-intelligence article
[ARTICLE · art-38448] src=lesswrong.com ↗ pub= topic=artificial-intelligence verified=true sentiment=· neutral

Could we have another family?

A proposal suggests using AI to sort people into groups of 4-10 based on personality similarity and proximity, offering incentives for interaction to create new family-like institutions. The idea aims to replicate family virtues such as forced commitment and support, potentially serving as a backup when biological families fail.

read1 min views1 publishedJun 24, 2026

Family is extremely important to a lot of people. It is also an institution we have had as long as we have existed.

If we wanted to, how hard would it be to create another institution with similar virtues? (Not to replace families in general, but to have more of that value, or a backup for when family fails, as it does for many people.) People often consider close friends to to be their ‘chosen family’, but I think the inability to choose is relevant to some of the virtue of real families: you are stuck with each other almost no matter what, and you are forced to be on good

A rough method I could imagine: take a large set of people and use AI to sort them by some measure of personality similarity and physical proximity into groups of 4-10, across different ages. Give each group substantial incentive to interact and be on good terms with each other, for instance free use of local amenities if they show up together. (I’m imagining this is brought about by a national government, but alternately a large group of people could decide to do this with each other.)

This plan is probably missing something like the meaning and loyalty-to-ones-blood aspects of family. Though I could imagine the right personality assessment system might change that, if people felt they were being put in touch with essentially their platonic soul-mates.

── more in #artificial-intelligence 4 stories · sorted by recency
sponsored brought to you by zahid.host 4,200+ EU-deployed projects
reading about agents? ship yours in a single git push.

Run your AI side-project on zahid.host

EU-based hosting, git-push deploys, automatic HTTPS, no cold starts. Free tier with a custom domain — perfect for shipping the agent you just read about.

$git push zahid main
Live at https://your-agent.zahid.host
Get free account → Pricing
from €0/mo · no card required
LIVE [news/could-we-have-anothe…] indexed:0 read:1min 2026-06-24 ·