Facebook co-founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has recently been promoting a future where artificial intelligence could replace friends, therapists, business agents and more.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Zuckerberg’s vision for the digital future, where AI friends “outnumber” human ones, and how chatbot experiences supersede therapists, ad agencies and coders.
Which is to say, per KTLA’s David Lazarus, that Zuckerberg sees the future as people choosing the automated illusion of friends over actual friends.
However, the social media mogul explains it in terms of numbers, suggesting that people want more friends and connections than they currently have, as the WSJ found in an interview Zuckerberg did with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel.
“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,” said Zuckerberg.
As for therapists, the WSJ said Zuckerberg and his supporters promote AI as a solution for those who struggle to afford or access therapy.
“For people who don’t have a person who’s a therapist, I think everyone will have an AI,” Zuckerberg said on a podcast with media analyst Ben Thompson.
Click here for the full report.
