Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI
wsj.comI 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.
"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 "@"?
Probably an AB experiment.
We allowed unsocialised nerds with no understanding of friendship and society dictate how friends and societies work and flourish. Absolute disaster.
Or rather we celebrate what makes money within the fuzzy bounds of the law as success and trust it far too much and hand wave for a bit and say something to the effect of “the markets will work out what’s ultimately good for people on its own.”
No, 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
Fascinating 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.
No, 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.
No, a tool was being used and that tool gradually changed over time.
The tool is implicitly anti-human but designed for socialization. That sounds like a bad recipe, no?
Bad. We thought that something would be fixed when they brought them to justice. Everything is on the same pace or even accelerated.
that didn't happen because it doesn't make sense.
Stable genius who blew 40b on metaverse ready for his next hit
I 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
> 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.
The 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.
Archive: https://archive.is/vkMoW
I 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.
Dead internet theory:
Most Facebook friends are already AI, so he’s just reifying the concept.
Around here we're just Artificial.
true, but we are not "intelligent"
Not totally sure what this means, but it feels right
Wikipedia 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
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.
Most 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?
> Most people's Facebook friends are people they know, so probably not.
The individuals actually on most people's Facebook friends list are people they know (who probably haven't logged in to the site in 5+ years on average) but the actual feed you see when interacting with the site is like 1-5% those people and 95-99% shit-posting meme accounts you never asked to see that almost certainly are entirely AI driven at this point.
In the virtual world, I do not believe these meme accounts will ever vanish, nor will platforms give you the magic button to not see them.
I don't disagree with either of those predictions, which is one of the main reasons why I just don't engage with those platforms anymore.
We have to do what's best for our benefit.
> 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.
Someone 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.
Why 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.
I 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.
I 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.
> 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-ke...
My roommate has schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
The first thing we look for when his mental health starts to go is social interaction. As soon as he starts to get antisocial we know his mental health is tanking.
Humans need social interaction. Happiness is a muscle and it's best strengthened with other people. Seeing people at all improves mental health.
Humans are social creatures whether people want to believe it or not.
Being isolated and alone will make almost anyone unhappy and unwell, whether that person will admit it or not.
If your partner is your best and only friend, not only are you putting far too much weight on one person to manage your emotional well-being, but you’ll be SOL if/when they leave, die, or become incapacitated.
Women, who tend to maintain more social connections, will often thrive without a partner in their old age. Men will often just kind of wither away.
Where 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
"need", as in can't do without, no. People survive without friends.
It's a miserable life though; for one, not everyone even has a romantic partner, and even for those who do, being 100% dependent on one person is incredibly toxic.
So yea, while being friendless might not kill you, realistically, adults need friends.
> In my life and in the life of people that I observe regularly, there is no real need for friends.
My condolences. I hope one day you find people that you can actually connect with and care about each other.
Most adults, I've observed, don't even particularly like their partner.
I think we just become so comfortable and okay with not being happy that we can't identify we're not happy. Everything becomes a routine, everything is automatic. We maintain systems that ultimately don't benefit us because we're terrified of what would happen otherwise.
He's just using a weight for another round of marketing. If someone needs friends, they probably find some.
We 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.
That is black and white thinking and far too bleak to match reality. If you find, brushing away any internal compulsions towards seeing things as utterly bleak, that this has truth to it, the next step is finding new friends.
No, it's the opposite, actually. Friends don't compete, they cooperate. Turning cooperation into competition is how you execute a divide and conquer strategy. If a group is too strong, you convince them that they are each other's true enemy; once they're at each other, you swoop in.
Most "competition" in our modern world is artificial. Try figuring out who benefits from it and where this mentality originates. You'll find that those two tend to overlap :)
peak cynicism
working in silicon valley and the new york dc corridor does that I guess.
> but do adults really need friends?
I mean, in the strictest sense no, in that you're unlikely to die if you don't have any. But most people would consider having friends fairly essential to a happy life.
[flagged]
> “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.
Nah 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.
Huh, 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?
I 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...
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.
It'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.
> “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.
> My god, he thinks people like their feed algorithm.
So, besides this being hilariously out of touch, how come he (seemingly) believes this? Is this perhaps what he says to the public, while believing something else? Or surrounded himself with yes-people who won't actually tell him what they think? Or is he maybe just extrapolating this from usage data and assume because X hours of their day was spent on the feed, they like it?
It's just so hard to imagine how he got to that place, as I don't think I've ever heard anyone (online or offline) about how they like their feed order, it's always complaints about it and how they have to jump through hoops to get it into a chronological order, and hide all the spam/non-friends stuff.
I've seen similar patterns of behaviour at corporations that are extremely metrics-driven (I don't call it "data-driven" that's bullshit).
Management put up the metrics they care about and think they are doing well when those reach some thresholds. They stop thinking about the qualitative side of anything over the time, and truly believe if the metrics are going where they want to it's because people love the experience overall.
It's very McNamara fallacy-y. Even more when you get sycophants around to push whatever your vision is, even to the detriment of the overall experience.
The quote does not suggest that he thinks people like the feed algorithm, just that it knows a lot about them. Extending that to thinking an AI that knows a lot about you will be a likeable companion isn’t quite so crazy in that context. (Though it is seeming to disregard that many people think society would be healthier if people went outside with their friends more and instead goes all-in on AI dystopia.)
It's really just a political statement, he's saying that you better get accustomed to being overworked that you'd only have time for parasocial relationships like these AI absurdities they're coming up with.
From the limited views we've had of Zuck, I think it's fair to conclude he's not really a people person.
I've noticed that rich and/or powerful people have a particular bias. They have a tendency to think their thought processes and preferences extend out to everyone, because they are successful and everyone wants to be successful.
I noticed this with RTO. I think a lot of executives genuinely, really thought it would improve our (ICs) jobs. Because think about what executives do. They sit around, talk to a bunch of people, make a bunch of decisions, and ultimately try to "sell" things. Well, that kind of stinks over zoom. So for them, it's true, RTO does make their job better. They can't really fathom, or maybe they just refuse to, what our job is. They don't sit there and walk a mile in our shoes.
For someone like Zuck, maybe this is how he would prefer his friends to be. That's kind of sad and pathetic, but what's even more sad is that he seems incapable of understanding other perspectives.
You guys can hide all the spam/non-friends stuff???
I don't use Facebook since like a decade back, but lots of family, friends, acquaintances and neighbors do. What I've been teaching them is to block/report everything they come across that they don't like, and after a week or the experience seems to improve a bit for them.
Not just that, but he's also got this weird idea that the feed algorithm understands people.
Mine right now is:
1. Friend
2. Ad: Mothers day promotion — mine died years ago
3. People you may know
4. Someone commenting on a post shared by a friend, but FB didn't expand the post so I could actually read the comment, this was just an announcement that such a comment exists
5. Friend
6. Ad: jewellery
7. One of my own posts
8. "Are you interested in this post?"
9. One of my own posts
10. People you may know
11. The same people in #2 with a different picture for the same deal
And this is relatively competent! Usually it's just an endless stream of recommendations for things I have no interest in — meme groups, or support a team I've never heard of in a sport I don't follow in a state I've not visited in a country I was last in before the pandemic, or services I can only buy if I was both a citizen of a different country and living in an additional different country, or both (but as separate ads) dick pills and boob surgery.
I may not be interested in the mother's day promo or the jewellery, but I could at least theoretically buy them if I was.
But then I refresh it, and the friend's posts are reminders to vote… in the UK local elections… which were last week… and I live in Berlin.
On the plus side, this makes it very easy for me at least to not find it at all addictive. If only everyone was so lucky…
You're right. However, you must be gaslit and your true observations called into question, to protect the aura of the advertising industry and belief in the algoritms.
All of these algorithms are insanely effective. Thousands of smart people smarter than you made them, how could they not work? If they don't work on you, you're an outlier, they work on everyone else. They work on you, but you just don't realize it. All of these algorithms are insanely effective. Thousands of smart people smarter than you made them, how could they not work? If they don't work on you, you're an outlier, they work on everyone else. They work on you, but you just don't realize it. All of these algorithms are insanely effective. Thousands of smart people smarter than you made them, how could they not work? If they don't work on you, you're an outlier, they work on everyone else. They work on you, but you just don't realize it.
That's a really fun exercise. Mine shows: 1. A popular media personality I like and actually follow. The algorithm is sometimes OK with guessing the topmost post. 2. People you may know. 3. Some make-up advertisement by a Facebook user in one of the groups I'm in (totally irrelevant) 4. Some vaguely relevant news item about my city 5. A cute puppy 6. A vaguely relevant news item again 7. Irrelevant reels
Basically, my life hasn't been enriched by seeing the feed in any way. The one in the top spot was fine but I actively follow that person anyway and check their profile from time to time, so I wouldn't have missed it.
Gravity will catch up with the coyote as the user base ages out.
Then their AI users can interact with each other in their shiny metaverse so we humans can be left in peace.
Just like the algorithm feed, constant social interaction with llm is his best bet on making money off of them, so he’s pitching it to investors.
Zuck gets presentations with slides that say things like “XYZ feed ranking tweaks added 50 million net-new hours of time spent per day”
Numbers like that can warp a person’s perspective
I wonder how much time HE spends with his algorithms every day
> I wonder how much time HE spends with his algorithms every day
Don't know about him, but I understand he tightly shields his own kids from social media use.
Maybe a lot, but he enjoys the IF user == "zuck" THEN statements in the code.
billions of people visit their feed hourly. I think it's fair to say that [some] people like their feed algorithm.
edited to add [some]
Do you think everyone that smokes likes cigarettes?
Addictions are strange to comprehend.
If 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.
The 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.
They're addicted to getting angry, I would not call it enjoying
He’s rediscovered the Eliza effect.
"Most of your friends will be AI"
No they won't.
"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.
Mark's just talking from personal experience. He's not a good dude, why don't people realize that?
(OldiesButGoodies)
"Zuckerborg's Grand Vision: Resistance is Futile"
zuckerberg'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
I have doubt, Tiktok is full of young women, saying they like Chatgpt more then their friends now.
I 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.
I 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.
I 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.
He doesnt understand people, but he understands market capture.
Keeping 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!
I'd rather just be lonely.
People 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.
What a nerd.
Are all of Mark's friends LLMs, ergo he thinks everyone else's should be too?
To 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.
Conversation 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.
Indeed. Just think how bad Zuck's sycophants must be, for that to be better...
> Are all of Mark's friends
I dont get the impression there are many...
A happy nerd, though.
A *rich one. Who knows if he's happy or not.
He seems pretty stable and content...
Does 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.
> 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.
Oh, 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.
Do 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.
I mean, he's proposing that people befriend chatbots; that's not _particularly_ stable.
This 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”
Are there any sane billionaires under 60 out there anymore?
I 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
This shows what a huge evil fool Zuck is.