I 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 "@"?
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.
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
> “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.
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.
> 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.
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…
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 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 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.
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.
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
jgrahamc|10 months ago
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|10 months ago
world2vec|10 months ago
spacemadness|10 months ago
master-lincoln|10 months ago
hnpolicestate|10 months ago
simultsop|10 months ago
nh23423fefe|9 months ago
yfw|10 months ago
shortrounddev2|10 months ago
lcnmrn|10 months ago
Balgair|9 months ago
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.
ne0flex|10 months ago
bitmasher9|10 months ago
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.
throwpoaster|10 months ago
Most Facebook friends are already AI, so he’s just reifying the concept.
fidotron|10 months ago
timcobb|10 months ago
krapp|10 months ago
I mean, if this were actually the case there would be no reason to "reify the concept." Reify for whom?
flpm|10 months ago
_Algernon_|10 months ago
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apical_dendrite|10 months ago
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.
ctxc|10 months ago
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.
unknown|10 months ago
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harddrivereque|10 months ago
t_mann|10 months ago
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...
chneu|10 months ago
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.
archagon|9 months ago
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.
tsbischof|10 months ago
DarkWiiPlayer|10 months ago
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.
const_cast|9 months ago
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.
simultsop|10 months ago
stuckinhell|10 months ago
Which means you can't let non family members too close.
unknown|10 months ago
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rsynnott|10 months ago
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.
itsanaccount|10 months ago
go-lion-4|10 months ago
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peterldowns|10 months ago
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.
chneu|10 months ago
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.
dewarrn1|10 months ago
pkoird|10 months ago
My god, he thinks people like their feed algorithm.
diggan|10 months ago
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.
ben_w|10 months ago
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…
esafak|10 months ago
Then their AI users can interact with each other in their shiny metaverse so we humans can be left in peace.
bitmasher9|10 months ago
hsod|9 months ago
Numbers like that can warp a person’s perspective
laweijfmvo|10 months ago
idkwhattocallme|10 months ago
edited to add [some]
SanjayMehta|10 months ago
welly|10 months ago
No they won't.
mysterydip|10 months ago
I get the appeal, but there's something "you shouldn't have ice cream for every meal" about it.
NickC25|10 months ago
mid1221213|9 months ago
"Zuckerborg's Grand Vision: Resistance is Futile"
malthaus|10 months ago
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|10 months ago
ixau|10 months ago
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.
zelos|10 months ago
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.
apical_dendrite|10 months ago
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.
kranke155|10 months ago
ahartmetz|9 months ago
That plan seems incredibly evil, but who gives a shit? Zuckerberg sure doesn't!
vinceguidry|10 months ago
DarkWiiPlayer|10 months ago
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.
31337Logic|10 months ago
candiddevmike|10 months ago
amelius|10 months ago
muglug|10 months ago
insane_dreamer|9 months ago
didgetmaster|10 months ago
jewscum|9 months ago
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toiletfuneral|9 months ago
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hereaiham|10 months ago