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Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI
- ahartmetz 1y agoKeeping people in an even worse bubble of well-spoken yes-...agents will surely fix the division of society, right?! That plan seems incredibly evil, but who gives a shit? Zuckerberg sure doesn't!
- ne0flex 1y agoArchive: https://archive.is/vkMoW https://archive.is/vkMoW
- 31337Logic 1y agoWhat a nerd.
- amelius 1y agoA happy nerd, though.
- pkoird 1y agoA *rich one. Who knows if he's happy or not.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- timcobb 1y agoHe seems pretty stable and content...
- throwanem 1y agoDoes he? These are prime midlife crisis years for someone his age, I believe, and he has been lately trying on identities like a tween too shy and boring to manage a really florid case of chuuni.
- ben_w 1y ago> chuuni TIL a new word, which totally explains my teenage interest in the occult, Wicca, shapeshifting magic, etc. — although I did also have a syncretic New Age/Hindu/Catholic mother, which was the more obvious proximal cause.
- throwanem 1y agoOh, I was the same. It's a species of healthy and developmentally sound 'rebellion,' I think. Nothing really out of the ordinary - though of course I would as soon kick a puppy, as say so to someone in the throes of it! People deserve to enjoy themselves and kids deserve to be kids. But I do take "chuunibyou" (chūnibyō) as just part of what we do around that age, to begin the process of cleaving unto ourselves and defining who we are. It only happens English doesn't have a word for this aspect specifically; luckily for us, what it does have is a habit of mugging other languages for loose vocabulary.
- izzydata 1y agoDo you know him personally? How could anyone know that. The times he is on camera is a tiny fraction of his life in which he is most likely to not be his true self.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rsynnott 1y agoI mean, he's proposing that people befriend chatbots; that's not _particularly_ stable.
- candiddevmike 1y agoAre all of Mark's friends LLMs, ergo he thinks everyone else's should be too?
- cies 1y ago> Are all of Mark's friends I dont get the impression there are many...
- ajb 1y agoTo a rich person, anyone who interacts with them is likely to be after their money. So from his point of view, LLMs are actually conversation partners who he knows aren't seeing him as a rich person, and so may actually feel more trustworthy than real people. Of course, this is entirely in conflict with the fact that he will be training LLMs to extract everyone else's money. But emotions aren't logical.
- fakedang 1y agoConversation partners? More like stooges who'll validate their every thought and kiss their ass along the way. Of all the models I've tried, only Gemini tries to pushback hard whenever I say something wrong or illogical.
- ajb 1y agoIndeed. Just think how bad Zuck's sycophants must be, for that to be better...
- pkoird 1y ago> “I think people are going to want a system that knows them well and that kind of understands them in the way that their feed algorithms do,” My god, he thinks people like their feed algorithm.
- idkwhattocallme 1y agobillions of people visit their feed hourly. I think it's fair to say that [some] people like their feed algorithm. edited to add [some]
- skyyler 1y agoDo you think everyone that smokes likes cigarettes? Addictions are strange to comprehend.
- piva00 1y agoIf you ask around, how many people who constantly uses their feed you think will answer "I love this product and the feed I get"? I don't know many people in real life who praises it, it's a thing that some are absolutely addicted to, others use as a pastime in the bathroom, in queues, anywhere they would get bored. Many even display the same behaviour as addicts, they don't want to be there, and have to create friction and obstacles to make them avoid it, just this weekend I taught a friend on how they could limit their time on Instagram after he opened up that it was just making him sad and he couldn't stop, tried deleting the app a few times and always ended up reinstalling in a couple of days. You are falling into the same trap as Zuck, just because usage is high doesn't mean people like it.
- ben_w 1y agoThe algorithmic feed is the default one whenever you visit the site. It doesn't mean people like it, only that this is where they go first before clicking through to the "Friends" feed — sure, they could bookmark the friends feed, but will they? I mean, I vaguely remember that a fresh install of safari has facebook.com itself as a default bookmark, though I always delete such things and memory is fallible. And that's without counting the addictive vs. valuable distinction that the other replies are making.
- throwpoaster 1y agoDead internet theory: Most Facebook friends are already AI, so he’s just reifying the concept.
- timcobb 1y agoNot totally sure what this means, but it feels right
- ben_w 1y agoWikipedia says: "… a conspiracy theory that asserts, due to a coordinated and intentional effort, the Internet now consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content manipulated by algorithmic curation to control the population and minimize organic human activity." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory Myself, I wouldn't say it's "coordinated" and therefore isn't a "conspiracy", but I would say it's a lot of uncoordinated groups who are intentionally trying to manipulate public opinion — the same people who have been trying to do so ever since whichever was was conceived first (if not named so) of "SEO", "spam", "propaganda", "preaching" etc., it's just that now we have LLMs that can personalise everything, I have to pinky swear I'm not a bot myself because you can't possibly tell from just my words alone.
- krapp 1y agoMost people's Facebook friends are people they know, so probably not. I mean, if this were actually the case there would be no reason to "reify the concept." Reify for whom?
- AStonesThrow 1y ago> Most people's Facebook friends are people they know I'd be skeptical of that at this point. A few years ago I began to ponder what "friendship" really meant, and whether I indeed had any friends at all. Sure, I retained a few friendly faces from my high school years, but that's about it. My sister and my cousins won't even accept my FB friend requests. Another thing I noticed was that a large percentage of my FB "friends" were becoming cagey about their own identity. Their profile photos weren't RL depictions; sometimes they weren't even cartoon avatars. A frequent trick for married Catholic women is that they put up a "couples photo" with their husband. Fine, I get it, but that's not what profile photos are for. So I began to wax skeptical about the identities of the people controlling FB accounts. And you know what? There's no way to know. Even if you've met in person and you're completely satisified that your RL Friend controls the FB credentials, that doesn't mean they're 100% always going to be controlling that account when they're out of your sight. So I drastically pared down "friends" to people who have my intrinsic trust and faith that they will not fuck around with their identity. Again, I really have no way of knowing. But being that my "friends" list is down to about 5 lucky contestants, I'm not too worried. Unfortunately that means that my newsfeed is filled with a lot of non-friend content. I try to mostly follow "Official Pages" of reputable businesses with whom I have an actual relationship, so I do get news that I can use, but it's dull reading that newsfeed, honestly.
- welly 1y ago"Most of your friends will be AI" No they won't.
- yfw 1y agoStable genius who blew 40b on metaverse ready for his next hit
- shortrounddev2 1y agoI think of him as a 20 year old one hit wonder who got lucky by making a popular website and meeting Sheryl Sandberg. Meta's strategy since then has been to buy their competitors or just rip off their core features. When was the last thing Facebook did anything new or interesting? Marky Mark and the Zucky Bunch have been coasting for over 10 years at least
- diggan 1y ago> When was the last thing Facebook did anything new or interesting? I guess pytorch is kind of cool and useful, and actually came from Facebook and not a company they bought (like React coming from Instagram). Although I guess you could make the case that Facebook didn't really "invent" pytorch as it is/was a port of Torch.
- lcnmrn 1y agoStable?
- jordanb 1y agohttps://knowyourmeme.com/memes/very-stable-genius https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/very-stable-genius
- bitmasher9 1y agoI think one major aspect of friendship is the random reward (similar to a casino). In any given social interaction the outcome could be extremely negative to extremely positive. While a good friend will heavily skew positive, there is still a range of outcomes. Humans can have this range of social outcomes naturally because all parties are constantly in different moods. Sometimes humans careful choose their social behavior to manipulate others, and this is generally frowned upon. A machine cannot have a wide range of social rewards without being manipulative.
- apical_dendrite 1y agoWhy bother with all the stress and risk of a relationship with a real human when you can have a virtual relationship with someone who is always available and can be tweaked to meet your exact specifications? I suspect history will see Meta the same way it sees Purdue Pharma - their greed allowed them to convince themselves they were providing something good for the world, while they were actually creating something enormously harmful.
- zelos 1y agoI know it's a bit stupid saying this about the owner of the world's biggest social network, but does he understand people at all? I'm pretty sure you wouldn't need a very advanced AI to replace most friends' interactions on Facebook, but that's completely missing the point.
- kranke155 1y agoHe doesnt understand people, but he understands market capture.
- apical_dendrite 1y agoI actually think a lot of people will want to talk to an AI that's available any time to listen to their problems and give them validation. Whether that's ultimately good or bad, I don't know (I suspect bad). That's not really friendship, or at least it's just a part of friendship, but I think that's the part that AI is most capable of.
- world2vec 1y agoWe allowed unsocialised nerds with no understanding of friendship and society dictate how friends and societies work and flourish. Absolute disaster.
- simultsop 1y agoNo, we used a tool, and we've got addicted. Some fought that addiction, others are not figuring out what is going on yet. Free market and shiny gadget.
- hnpolicestate 1y agoThe tool is implicitly anti-human but designed for socialization. That sounds like a bad recipe, no?
- simultsop 1y agoBad. We thought that something would be fixed when they brought them to justice. Everything is on the same pace or even accelerated.
- SirFatty 1y agoNo, a tool was being used and that tool gradually changed over time.
- hnpolicestate 1y agoFascinating and true point, but considering the former are the only group technically capable of implementing it, you'd assume they would have an outsized role dictating the terms of engagement.
- master-lincoln 1y agoNo, some people allowed that. Those people decided that was a good idea for them despite there being reports of the bad effects. And even when other similar options arrived they stayed. Absolute disaster
- 1y ago
- ixau 1y agoI think he's on to something big here. People are getting more and more isolated, spending countless hours scrolling on stupid small screens. What if you could have your perfect information bubble from all your friends, who always are there for you, always agree, or act in just the right way? Never thought about this one. Well, I guess that why he's a billionaire. I'm happy I lived before this nightmare comes to life.
- NickC25 1y agoMark's just talking from personal experience. He's not a good dude, why don't people realize that?
- vinceguidry 1y agoI'd rather just be lonely.
- flpm 1y agoSomeone having a lot of artificial "friends" algorithmically based on their behavior sounds more like a disorder than a desirable state. Something in-between schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder, but outside your brain. But all is fine, as long someone can make money out of it.
- _Algernon_ 1y ago[flagged]
- mdhb 1y agoLike when Facebook detected when teen girls deleted selfies so it could serve them beauty ads. https://futurism.com/facebook-beauty-targeted-ads https://futurism.com/facebook-beauty-targeted-ads
- ctxc 1y agoI get the skepticism. But I already see several people chatting with chatgpt like they would with a friend. A long memory window will increase stickiness and I don't think this is too far fetched. I thought too much screentime was bad, but man... Maybe this is how the people who thought TVs were bad felt when they saw people glued to phones.
- muglug 1y agoThis whole schtick is “talk about how you’re building the future but your business model is selling ads to digitally-addled teens and baby-boomers”
- malthaus 1y agozuckerberg's next big miss in a future where AI is doing most of the mundane work, real / personal connections are infinitely more valuable as everything else becomes commoditized background noise
- stuckinhell 1y agoI have doubt, Tiktok is full of young women, saying they like Chatgpt more then their friends now.
- harddrivereque 1y agoI know it is a controversial topic, but do adults really need friends? I feel like "being friends" is something from middle school where our brains were different. Now, there are colleagues, there are neighbors, there is the partner that is supposedly our only and best friend, and optionally there are pets/kids. But proper friends? In my life and in the life of people that I observe regularly, there is no real need for friends.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- go-lion-4 1y ago[flagged]
- simultsop 1y agoHe's just using a weight for another round of marketing. If someone needs friends, they probably find some.
- tsbischof 1y agoWhere do you turn for a variety of opinions, activities, and social interactions over the long term? There is incredible value in growing alongside people over a period of time and acting as a mutual support network
- t_mann 1y ago> do adults really need friends? There's substantial evidence that it makes people live happier, longer and healthier lives, eg [0]. [0] https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/healthy-aging/a-surprising-key-to-healthy-aging-strong-social-connections/ https://mcpress.mayoclinic.org/healthy-aging/a-surprising-ke...
- itsanaccount 1y ago[flagged]
- stuckinhell 1y agoWe do but in this hypercompetitive landscape. Our friends are also competitors for partners, jobs, and resources. Which means you can't let non family members too close.
- jgrahamc 1y agoI don't use Facebook or Instagram but I do use WhatsApp. Recently, Meta added "Meta AI" to WhatsApp and it added itself as a participant in private chat groups I have with friends etc. If I type the @ symbol in a group to mention a participant Meta AI is in the list. I've moved every contact I can to Signal. I absolutely do not want Meta inserting some AI thing in private group chats. There's no option to disable this functionality. It's become standard for me to ask "Do you have a Signal account?" to anyone who contacts me via WhatsApp. It's sad to have to turn away from a service that I used and loved so much. To be clear: I am not against the idea of AI chatbots, and I wouldn't mind one being available inside WhatsApp, but the roll out of this feature is horribly invasive: it's added to group chats, and there's a floating circle thing on the main WhatsApp page, and I can't disable it. I did ask Meta AI in WhatsApp how to disable it and it told me that there's no official way to remove it and also suggested I might like to switch another messaging app like Signal.
- esbeeb 1y ago"If I type the @ symbol in a group to mention a participant Meta AI is in the list." - I just tried it myself in a group chat, but I don't see it. Maybe it's just starting to be added? or was made invisible to being listed by "@"?
- spacemadness 1y agoProbably an AB experiment.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- DarkWiiPlayer 1y agoPeople having friends sucks because, while you can shove products in between them, you can only sell them at a price justified by the value they add to the friendship, not the value of the friendship instead. People would be willing to pay so much more if what they were paying for was the friendship instead, but so far, any attempt at taking friendships hostage and having people pay have gone nowhere. So the logical conclusion is to just sell the friendships immediately; that way you can put a price tag directly on the friendship itself and earn much more money from it. This is a perfectly reasonable business strategy when you're a soulless psychopath with an insatiable hunger for endless wealth.
- mysterydip 1y ago"I want most of my friends to be AI, and I'm normal, so everyone else who's normal must want that, too" I get the appeal, but there's something "you shouldn't have ice cream for every meal" about it.
- peterldowns 1y ago> “The average American I think has, it’s fewer than three friends, three people they’d consider friends, and the average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think it’s like 15 friends,” he said in the interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel. Is this true? I don't believe this AT ALL. No way that the average American would say they only have 3 friends, that's beyond low.
- dewarrn1 1y agoIt's not my area of expertise, but I have seen other estimates that American adults, especially men, are likely to have and report numbers of friends such that the median is in the single digits.
- chneu 1y agoNah that seems about right. If you remove family and online interactions, I'd wager most white men under the age of 40 who aren't married have less than 3 friends. I'd also wager that most single women under the age of 40 have less than 5 friends.
- peterldowns 1y agoHuh, interesting, do you have any links I could read for more info? This is really surprising to me. And out of curiosity, what does being white have to do with it?
- chneu 1y agoI believe the latest episode of the "Modern Love" podcast is kind of about this. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/podcasts/why-boys-and-men-are-floundering-according-to-relationship-therapist-terry-real.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/podcasts/why-boys-and-men... I don't have any more links off hand, but I don't think this is a "new" thing as I've seen it discussed quite a lot over the years. Things such as "Why do white men kill themselves so much more than other groups?" I don't want to get into the whole "white men's problems are more important than other groups problems" because it's very sensitive and that isn't the point I was making. There are a ton of reasons why this seems to afflict white men a bit more and I don't know which of them are more valid than others. Whether the idea that it affects white men more is probably contentious in itself. That's not the point. I'm not claiming I'm right or that it's a serious issue. It's just an interesting topic that probably has a billion factors contributing. It's interesting to think about and can be eye opening to what other people are going through.
- hereaiham 1y agoThis shows what a huge evil fool Zuck is.
- didgetmaster 1y agoI really like friends who completely ignore the things that I like and insist that we do the things that they like instead, and talk only about things that interest them! /s
- insane_dreamer 1y agoAre there any sane billionaires under 60 out there anymore?
- jewscum 1y ago[dead]
- Balgair 1y agoThe longer portion from the Dwarkesh interview isn't as flashy as the article makes out. Mark is essentially saying in that interview that people need more friends, have room for them in their lives, and they struggle to keep them. Using AI to help you get real people to be your friends is the goal there, not to replace people. That said, if you listen to the whole interview, then it really does come across that Zuck really doesn't know what a friend is, and never really has. And at this point in his life, I don't think that going to change. Dude lives in a house with meter thick RPG-proof windows. His reality very much is too distorted by his wealth. He's, literally, too rich to function.
- toiletfuneral 1y ago[dead]
- mid1221213 1y ago(OldiesButGoodies) "Zuckerborg's Grand Vision: Resistance is Futile"