Do You Trust Mark Zuckerberg To Solve Your Loneliness With an 'AI Friend'? 44
An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from The Guardian, written by columnist Emma Brockes: Mark Zuckerberg has gone on a promotional tour to talk up the potential of AI in human relationships. I know; listening to Zuck on friendship is a bit like taking business advice from Bernie Madoff or lessons in sportsmanship from Tonya Harding. But at recent tech conferences and on podcasts, Zuck has been saying he has seen the future and it's one in which the world's "loneliness epidemic" is alleviated by people finding friendship with "a system that knows them well and that kind of understands them in the way that their feed algorithms do." In essence, we'll be friends with AI, instead of people. The missing air quotes around "knows" and "understands" is a distinction we can assume Zuck neither knows nor understands.
This push by the 41-year-old tech leader would be less startling if it weren't for the fact that semi-regularly online now you can find people writing about their relationships with their AI therapist or chatbot and insisting that if it's real to them, then it's real, period. The chatbot is, they will argue, "actively" listening to them. On a podcast with Dwarkesh Patel last month Zuck envisaged a near-future in which "you'll be scrolling through your feed, and there will be content that maybe looks like a Reel to start, but you can talk to it, or interact with it and it talks back." The average American, he said, has fewer than three friends but needs more. Hey presto, a ready solution.
The problem, obviously, isn't that chatting to a bot gives the illusion of intimacy, but that, in Zuckerberg's universe, it is indistinguishable from real intimacy, an equivalent and equally meaningful version of human-to-human contact. If that makes no sense, suggests Zuck, then either the meaning of words has to change or we have to come up with new words: "Over time," says Zuckerberg, as more and more people turn to AI friends, "we'll find the vocabulary as a society to be able to articulate why that is valuable." ... The sheer wrongness of this argument is so stark that it puts anyone who gives it more than a moment's thought in the weird position of having to define units of reality as basic as "person." To extend Zuckerberg's logic: a book can make you feel less alone and that feeling can be real. Which doesn't mean that your relationship with the author is genuine, intimate or reciprocated in anything like the way a relationship with your friends is.
This push by the 41-year-old tech leader would be less startling if it weren't for the fact that semi-regularly online now you can find people writing about their relationships with their AI therapist or chatbot and insisting that if it's real to them, then it's real, period. The chatbot is, they will argue, "actively" listening to them. On a podcast with Dwarkesh Patel last month Zuck envisaged a near-future in which "you'll be scrolling through your feed, and there will be content that maybe looks like a Reel to start, but you can talk to it, or interact with it and it talks back." The average American, he said, has fewer than three friends but needs more. Hey presto, a ready solution.
The problem, obviously, isn't that chatting to a bot gives the illusion of intimacy, but that, in Zuckerberg's universe, it is indistinguishable from real intimacy, an equivalent and equally meaningful version of human-to-human contact. If that makes no sense, suggests Zuck, then either the meaning of words has to change or we have to come up with new words: "Over time," says Zuckerberg, as more and more people turn to AI friends, "we'll find the vocabulary as a society to be able to articulate why that is valuable." ... The sheer wrongness of this argument is so stark that it puts anyone who gives it more than a moment's thought in the weird position of having to define units of reality as basic as "person." To extend Zuckerberg's logic: a book can make you feel less alone and that feeling can be real. Which doesn't mean that your relationship with the author is genuine, intimate or reciprocated in anything like the way a relationship with your friends is.
Trust? Zuckerberg? Trust *Zuckerberg*? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
I'd trust him to reach for my wallet while it's still in my pocket and grab my balls on the way as well.
I don't think so (Score:2)
Trust Mark Zuckerberg? That's a huge NO, and it goes rapidly downhill as one reads the rest of the title.
Ridiculous.
Hell, no (Score:2, Informative)
Re: Hell, no (Score:1)
And that's exactly the point: to exfiltrate as much personal information from the victims brain as possible and use it for advertising and other nefarious purposes.
join the Borg (Score:2)
Strap on this headset today.
Re: (Score:1)
Strap on whaaat?
As big as VR (Score:2)
He's "seen the future" here as much as he did with the $100B+ pile of cash he lit on fire in pursuit of VR.
No, but Zuck Does (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously projecting a bit, isnâ(TM)t he? Poor lonely guy!
You joke, but Zuck seems like the type who'd have a difficult time actually relating to people. When he released that "Smoking Meats" video (which The Gregory Brothers turned into a kind of catchy song), Zuck gave off his usual "lizard wearing a human suit" vibes. Now, I'm sure he has people lining up to be around him because he has money, but that's not really the same thing as organically forming friendships.
Nope. (Score:1)
Solving loneliness by making changes (Score:1)
You solve loneliness by either, going out and meeting people, keeping busy and doing things or learning to accept it.
These c**ts of things will drive people to suicide when the money runs out.
Re: (Score:1)
What if the money never has to run out?
ChatGPT suggests (once again trying to teach it to produce simple ASCII non-unicode that slashdot will post without funny characters showing up):
What if the money never has to run out? Not saying AI companions are a perfect solution, but what if we had systems -- maybe public investment funds or basic income models -- that made ongoing access sustainable? Would your concern still hold?
No, but Zuck Needs One (Score:1)
"Solve my loneliness"? (Score:1)
Why does Emma assume people are "lonely"? They aren't, so there is nothing for zuck the droid to "solve". Or for Emma to muse about.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, someone's saying it and saying it about men specifically. No-one's mentioned the elephant in the room, so I will. Men divide relationships into activities (predominately male) and intimacy (female only). Now that young people are spending more time in single-sex groups, they and young males in particular, are experiencing a relationship shortage.
It's easy to predict other side-effects but I won't discuss them. In the end, men have to be saved from themselves but that has never been a cultural pr
Obligatory XKCD (Score:3)
https://xkcd.com/632/ [xkcd.com]
it's obviously outdated. ChatGPT could solve a CAPTCHA like that without much trouble.
Re: (Score:2)
A CAPTCHA this ? Oh, no...this [stackexchange.com] is a CAPTCHA.
We live in a world of contrast (Score:3)
Facebook is wasting the potential of AI with stupid crap like "virtual friends" while Deep Mind just used AI to find a new algorithm for efficiently computing matrix multiplication
Betteridge's law (Score:2)
No.
It's certainly creepy (Score:5, Interesting)
Chatbots don't get tired of talking to you or tell you that your desired topics of conversation are too boring. They're generally very agreeable, which certainly can be a hard to resist siren song compared against real humans, who are more likely to respond with stronger opinions. For example, I just told ChatGPT that one of my friends is into the furry subculture and that I find it a bit off-putting, it responded with:
Your reaction doesn’t make you a bad friend or a closed-minded person; it just means you're having a normal human response to something that feels foreign to you. The key thing is how you handle that discomfort - staying respectful and open-minded even if you don’t personally relate to it is a good way to support your friend without compromising your own boundaries.
I mean damn, it just gave me a virtual pat on the back and essentially said "Yep, you're fine. Totally cool to be weirded out so long as you're not a dick about it." A real human would probably have stronger opinions one way or the other based on their own biases, possibly either leaning into the idea that furries are weird and perhaps question why I remain friends with someone I can't relate to in that aspect, or on the other side of the spectrum someone might imply that I need to lighten up and stop being so closed-minded.
The danger here is that it's like having your own 24/7 personal echo chamber, and I'd venture that too much time spent talking to a chatbot could very well send someone spiraling into narcissism. Which, I'd like to point out in the tale of Narcissus wasn't necessarily about falling in love with one's self, but falling in love with an unattainable reflection of one's self.
Re: (Score:2)
It is a really good answer, though. You don't have to force yourself to like something you don't, but live and let live.
Zuckerberg is incompetent fool (Score:2)
Everything he has done since that doesn't involve buying up potential competitors has been an unmitigated disaster.
These are the job creators wh
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, have you seen the photos of Zuck at Trump's inauguration? [usatoday.com] Dude looks happy as a pig in freshly shat shit.
If the quantum mirror from Stargate SG1 (or if we have any lost Gen Zers present, the portal gun from Rick and Morty) was a real thing, I'd totally love to visit the alternate reality where Zuck is working as a greeter at Walmart.
I don't trust AI to be a friend (Score:2)
I've been using AI quite a bit for a writing editor, though everything it suggests needs heavy editing, but it works better than me rereading it over and over again. The biggest problem is the AI always fawning over what I asked it to review. It takes a fair bit of digging through the almost sycophantic content to get the actual critique from the AI, even after asking it to stop flattering me a few times. Maybe some people will like this but it doesn't fit what I want from a friend.
Re: (Score:2)
The biggest problem is the AI always fawning over what I asked it to review.
I've noticed this too. I'm now going to blame ChatGPT as the reason the slightly more charred (which as near as I can tell, is the only actual change) Old El Paso taco shells have a "new & improved taste!"
For shits and giggles, I just pretended I was the head taco honcho and asked if it was a good idea to make things a bit more roasty with my taco shells, and sure enough, yup, it thought it was a fantastic proposal.
Errrmm ... No. (??!?) (Score:2)
Obviously.
Re: Trust Zuckerberg (Score:2)
Rumor has it that he uses teeth and often bites.
Lost me at (Score:2)
"Do you trust Zuckerberg...
Does my AI Friend come with legs? (Score:1)
Yes (Score:2)
He also struck me as a deeply qualified human psychology expert to deal with such a profound issue as loneliness.
What's the point of having human friends or a pet anyways if you can be friends with a really intelligent toaster?
Invites Betteridge's Law (Score:2)
Do You Trust Mark Zuckerberg To Solve Your Loneliness With an 'AI Friend'?
Given Betteridge's law of headlines [wikipedia.org], the answer is a definitive "No".
The only thing that I trust Zuckerberg to do is to ensure that any profit in a transaction goes to him, and nobody else.
I see him as a reason (Score:1)
AI will decrease human interaction (Score:2)
children will be raised by robots. Salespeople, cashiers, lawyers, insurance, travel agency personel replaced by chatbots. Knowledge workers will no longer collaborate directly but asynchronous through AI agents.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines to the max (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
trust... (Score:2)
Do You Trust Mark Zuckerberg
No.
to solve...
Oh, the sentence went on?