Subj : Zuckerberg wants everyone
To   : All
From : Mike Powell
Date : Tue May 13 2025 11:08 am

Mark Zuckerberg wants everyone to have AI friends, but I think he's missing
the point of AI, and the point of friendship

Date:
Tue, 13 May 2025 02:00:00 +0000

Description:
Mark Zuckerberg pitches AI as friendship supplement.

FULL STORY
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Friendships are a vital part of most people's lives. They can be complicated
and messy, but a good friendship is worth it, since, as Aristotle said,
"without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods."

Mark Zuckerberg has a potential solution for those seeking to build new
friendships: building new friends using AI. Thats only a slight rewording of
the viewpoint the Meta CEO is famous for, among other things, popularizing
the term "friending" as a verb. With caveats about the ways human friendships
offer things no AI currently can, Zuckerberg explained on a podcast hosted by
Dwarkesh Patel that people like to engage with AI chatbots like Meta AI about
their personal lives.

And since most Americans have far fewer friends than they'd like, there's
space for AI as an alternative. "As the personalization loop kicks in and the
AI starts to get to know you better and better, that will just be really
compelling," Zuckerberg said.

But compelling conversation doesn't mean real friendship. AI isnt your
friend. It cant be. And the more we try to make it one, the more we end up
misunderstanding both AI and actual friendship. AI is a tool. An amazing,
occasionally dazzling, often frustrating tool, but a tool no different than
your text message autocomplete or your handy Swiss Army knife. It's designed
to assist you and make your life easier.

Its not a being. It has no inner monologue. Its all surface and syntax. A
robotic parrot that reads the internet instead of mimicking your
catchphrases. Mimicry and scripted empathy are not real connections. They're
just performance without sentience.

Real friendship is not just about someone helping you all the time,
selflessly, without ever asking for something in return. If you text your
friend and they respond based on a probability matrix, they're not really
being your friend. While I love a clean UI as much as the next person, I dont
confuse it with love.

At best, an AI friend is a pet. But not even a warm, wiggly dog or a
judgmental cat. More like a beta fish or a Tamagotchi. A reactive presence
you can project feelings onto. Its always there, sure. But it doesnt care
about you. And deep down, you know it.

AI Therapy

Meanwhile, on another podcast with Ben Thompson, Zuckerberg suggested that
even if you dont have a human therapist, you should at least have an AI.
Therapy is expensive, and theres a mental health crisis with more demand than
supply. If an AI chatbot can step in and offer comfort to someone whos
struggling, it's hard to argue that's a bad thing. And it's not a bad idea in
isolation, but the details can be tricky.

While some chatbot-based wellness apps have shown promise, theyre only
necessary because of the enormous resource gap in providing mental health
services. After all, a trained therapist does more than rely on your words or
big, obvious emotional tone. They pick up on the unsaid. They recognize when
a smile hides your spiral. They make judgment calls that algorithms cant.

Most importantly, theyre bound by ethics in a way no program can match.
Theyre licensed. No matter how stringent an AI's rules are now, all it takes
is a change in programming for them to upload your emotional baggage to a
server farm. That's before mentioning the irony of a social media company
wanting to offer mental health services when their products are often linked
to worsening teen mental health and a digital addiction that can isolate
people from actual friends.

I talk to AI tools every day. I think AI can be very useful. I think my
automatic coffeemaker can be very useful too, even if I'm more likely to be
yelling at it to go faster than to bare my soul to it. And AI can support
therapists, enhance education, and offer customer service at 3 a.m. without
the usual hold music. But its not a surrogate for human connection.

We're not at a point where I fear everyone will retreat from messy,
inconvenient, flawed human relationships and opt for the sanitized,
low-stakes comfort of a chatbot who always agrees with us. But that doesn't
mean it's something to look forward to. You can't scale friendship, and you
shouldn't encourage people to choose software over doing the work of real
friendship. An AI will treat you just like it treats everyone, and, as
Aristotle also said, "A friend to all is a friend to none."

======================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/mark-zuckerberg-wa
nts-everyone-to-have-ai-friends-but-i-think-hes-missing-the-point-of-ai-and-th
e-point-of-friendship

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