Mark Zuckerberg on making AI chatbot friends

Mark Zuckerberg, in a podcast with Dwarkesh Patel, envisions a future where we are friends with AI:

Here’s one stat from working on social media for a long time that I always think is crazy. The average American has fewer than three friends, fewer than three people they would consider friends. And the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it’s something like 15 friends or something. At some point you’re like, “All right, I’m just too busy, I can’t deal with more people.”

But the average person wants more connection than they have. There’s a lot of concern people raise like, “Is this going to replace real-world, physical, in-person connections?” And my default is that the answer to that is probably not. There are all these things that are better about physical connections when you can have them. But the reality is that people just don’t have as much connection as they want. They feel more alone a lot of the time than they would like.

The gut reaction is that this is ridiculous. I agree. Fifteen friends? No way.

But really, AI companions in their current state seem far fetched. Definitely possible. But applicable to a few for now.

What if AI were packaged with some cute form like R2-D2 from Star Wars? Still creepy or maybe kind of cool? It seems like that’s where we’re headed. I probably won’t partake, but I hope if/when that happens, we stay skeptical enough to scrutinize the companies slurping up and processing all the data.