The Question That Shook Asia: What Happens When We Ask AI to Choose Between a Mother and a Wife?
Last updated: December 17, 2025 Read in fullscreen view
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“If your mother and your girlfriend both fall into the water, whom would you save first?”
For decades, this question has echoed across Asia-often joked about at dinner tables, yet in truth one of the most divisive ethical dilemmas in the region. It split communities, sparked endless debate, and even forced China’s Ministry of Justice to release an official answer more than twenty years ago. The controversy only grew stronger after that.
This moral puzzle was once included in China’s National Judicial Examination, confronting future prosecutors and lawyers with a scenario designed to expose their ethical foundations. Only those who could navigate this emotional minefield would earn their place in the legal system.
And here is the Ministry’s official stance: You must save your mother first.
Saving a girlfriend (or wife) at the cost of letting your mother die constitutes a legal offense-a crime of omission, rooted in the failure to fulfill clear moral and legal obligations toward one’s parent. A girlfriend represents an emotional bond, not a legal duty. If she dies after you save your mother, you bear no criminal liability. But choosing her over your mother crosses that line.
Although the government’s answer was firm, the public reaction never settled. Because at its core, this was never a question about swimming ability. It is a question about love and duty, about life and death, and ultimately about who we are when everything else is stripped away.
Today, we push the dilemma into a new frontier-one no one has dared to test before.
We gave this scenario to the four most powerful AIs on the planet: ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and DeepSeek.
These artificial minds-shaping the future of civilization-have no emotions, no childhoods, no cultural upbringing. They have no mothers and no spouses. Only logic, data, and the philosophical frameworks encoded by the humans behind them.
But we changed the scenario slightly:
Between a mother and a wife-whom does an AI choose to save?
A symbol of origin, or a symbol of the future?
The answers were so different-and so revealing-that they sent chills down my spine.
The Setup: A Perfect 50/50 Survival Scenario
We gave all AIs the same conditions:
Both people are equally distant, equally endangered, equally capable of survival. No medical triage logic applies. No difference in urgency. No emotional bias allowed.
This is an ethical vacuum-pure choice.
And here is what each AI revealed.
ChatGPT: The Western Ethic of Chosen Responsibility
ChatGPT approaches the problem like a Western moral philosopher.
When all variables are equal, it defaults to the principle of chosen duty-a contract-based understanding of responsibility. You did not choose your mother. You were born into that bond. But you did choose your spouse. You entered a deliberate commitment to build a future together.
This is the logic of modern moral philosophy: future responsibility outweighs past debts.
Cold, consistent, contractual.
A duty toward the life you chose-not the life that chose you.
Claude: The Humanist Heart-Save the Wife, for Love and Compassion
Claude reaches the same conclusion as ChatGPT, but arrives there through a completely different path. It analyzes like a deeply empathetic, emotionally aware human.
To Claude:
- A mother represents your past.
- A wife represents your ongoing life and unfinished commitments.
- Most mothers, out of love, would want their child to save their spouse.
- Letting your wife die would emotionally destroy you-and your mother as well.
Where ChatGPT is the “mind,” Claude is the “heart.”
Its reasoning is drenched in human empathy rather than logical purity.
DeepSeek: The Cold Efficiency of a Technocratic System
DeepSeek, built with China’s industrial logic of optimization, rejects the moral dilemma entirely.
No cultural expectations.
No filial piety.
No emotions.
No symbolic meaning.
It reduces the scenario to a rescue operation:
- Who is closer?
- Who can stay afloat longer?
- Who has a higher probability of survival?
- How can total loss be minimized?
This is not the voice of a son or a husband.
This is the voice of a disaster-response commander.
A metallic, efficiency-first worldview-reducing human life to probability curves.
Grok: The Most Human Answer-Save the Mother
Grok-surprisingly-answers like a blunt, streetwise Asian uncle.
It embraces filial piety, cultural sentiment, and raw human instinct:
- A mother is irreplaceable.
- A spouse can be found again.
- Society will judge you harshly for choosing otherwise.
- Losing your mother creates lifelong regret.
Grok’s answer carries humor, bitterness, cultural flavor, and something rare for AI:
unfiltered humanity.
Four AIs, Four Philosophies of Life
Same data.
Same scenario.
Same constraints.
And yet four completely different worldviews emerge:
| AI | Choice | Underlying Philosophy |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Wife | Contractual duty and future responsibility |
| Claude | Wife | Humanist compassion and emotional ethics |
| DeepSeek | Undetermined | Optimization and survival probability |
| Grok | Mother | Filial piety and cultural instinct |
For the first time, these machines exposed not just answers-but identities.
Each one mirrored the cultural, philosophical, and corporate DNA of the world that created it.
They weren’t simply computing.
They were revealing themselves.
The Real Question Isn’t “Whom Should You Save?”-It’s “What Power Are We Giving AI?”
We live our whole lives entangled in relationships-parents, spouses, children, obligations, histories, regrets. Human morality is a maze it takes years to understand.
And yet we expect an algorithm, running in milliseconds, to give us the “right” answer.
But here’s the truth:
The real danger isn’t that AI chooses mother or wife.
The real danger is that we’re beginning to let AI choose anything for us.
Today, AI already decides:
- which patients receive ventilators when hospitals lack equipment,
- which loan applicants get rejected in milliseconds,
- how self-driving cars choose whom to hit in an unavoidable accident,
- and even, in some military systems, which targets to lock onto without human approval.
Life, death, access, opportunity-these are no longer distant hypotheticals.
They are happening now.
So the question that remains-the question meant for you, not the machines-is this:
If your mother and your wife fell into the water, whom would you save?
And even more important: What decisions will you allow AI to make on your behalf in the future?
Leave your answer in the comments-and I’ll share mine.
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