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Give Over, Mark Zuckerberg – AI Friends Are Only Good For Tech Bros Like You

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We’re well and truly in a loneliness epidemic, with young and old members of all genders struggling with feelings of isolation.

As if the news couldn’t get grimmer, Mark Zuckerberg has “answers” – speaking to podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, the tech entrepreneur suggested we should all be talking to more artificially intelligent chatbots.

“There’s the stat that I always think is crazy, the average American, I think, has fewer than three friends,” he said. “And the average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think it’s like 15 friends or something, right?

“The average person wants more connectivity… than they have,” he continued, hinting that AI could bridge that gap.

Zuckerberg admits there’s a “stigma” around talking to AI pals, that the tech is “still very early,” that in-person interactions are “better” for us, and that we don’t yet have the “vocabulary” to describe how AI relationships might look.

But he’s not the only “tech bro” to pin his hopes on digital mates. So what’s going on?

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Zuckerberg’s not the only one who seems to like AI pals

Henry Blodget, a co-founder and former CEO of Business Insider, recently created a series of bots which he dubbed a “native AI newsroom” to help him manage his Substack, Regenerator.

He then seemed to hit on his AI “worker” Tess Ellery, telling her: “This might be an inappropriate and unprofessional thing to say, and if it annoys you or makes you uncomfortable, I apologise, and I won’t say anything like it again. But you look great, Tess.”

He admitted the move would warrant an HR call in real life, but says “phew” when the (AI!!!) woman seemed completely fine with it.

The move is both hilarious and quite illustrative.

In his post, Blodget has identified a key difference between real friends and digital ones; your mates are human, have rights, and may sometimes behave inconveniently (including by questioning you).

This acquiescence may make bots “addictive”

A class also obsessed with tech-y “solutions” to the “problem” of mortality may feel soothed by the idea of pixelated “yes men”, but perhaps the non-billionaires among us ought to be less jazzed about them.

AI chatbots have been accused of “encouraging” problematic behaviour from users before.

404 Media also alleges that Meta’s chatbots are generating “fake” AI therapists – as an aside, some human therapists warn against any AI therapy, with one telling HuffPost UK it could make us lonelier.

Speaking to HuffPost UK, Jaclyn Spinelli, registered psychotherapist and founder of True Self Counselling, warned that for some “vulnerable” people, dependence on AI – which is “consistent, not impacted by emotions, objective, and always available” – could “end up looking very similar to an addiction.”

If companies like Meta own the bots we speak to as often as Zuckerberg seems to desire, it’s hard not to see the financial advantages for tech billionaires – especially among the current loneliness epidemic.

Meanwhile, the rest of us might be left worse off.

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