(Credit: Bloomberg/Getty Images)
Will you be Mark Zuckerberg's friend? The Meta CEO this week suggested that AI could be a stand-in for real friends and act as a therapist for those who can't afford professional advice.
"The average American has, I think, fewer than three friends," Zuckerberg told tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel. "And the average person has [a] demand for meaningfully more," up to 15.
Meta AI is built directly into its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, as well as the company’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. There’s also now a dedicated Meta AI app.
"Is this going to replace in-person connections or real-life connections? My default is that the answer to that is probably no," Zuckerberg said. "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 the connections, and they feel more alone a lot of the time than they would like."
Zuckerberg acknowledged that there's a certain "stigma" over connecting with an AI. However, "Over time, we'll find the vocabulary as a society to articulate why they are valuable, why the people who are doing them are rational for doing it, and how it is actually adding value to their lives," he says. "But also, the field is very early [and] the embodiment in those things is still pretty weak."
Zuckerberg expanded on this concept during an appearance at Stripe's annual conference this week. "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," he told Stripe President John Collison, The Wall Street Journal reports.
He's referring to tools like the algorithmic feed on services like Instagram or TikTok that gradually learns your likes and dislikes over time to bring you more appropriate recommendations.
In a separate interview with podcaster and analyst Ben Thompson last week, Zuckerberg said he believes AI will allow for everyone to have their own therapist. "It’s like someone they can just talk to… but about whatever issues they’re worried about, and for people who don’t have a person who’s a therapist, I think everyone will have an AI."
Not everyone agrees that current AI chatbots can be used as a viable alternative to a real-life therapist. Speaking to The Guardian, mental health clinician Dame Til Wilkes, a professor at King’s College London, said, “I think AI is not at the level where it can provide nuance and it might actually suggest courses of action that are totally inappropriate.”
Complex scenarios will still require a human touch from a therapist, and it's advised that you seek professional help if you believe you need it. It's currently unclear if artificial intelligence technologies will ever replicate the experience of working with a trained therapist.