Friendships are a vital part of the life of most people. They can be complicated and messy, but a good friendship is worth it, since, as Aristotle said, “without friends, no one would choose to live, although he had all the other goods.”
Mark Zuckerberg has a potential solution for those who seek to build new friends: build new friends using AI. That is just a slight reactivation of the point of view, the goal CEO is famous, among other things, popularizing the term “friend” as a verb. With warnings about the ways in which human friendships offer things that I do not currently can, Zuckerberg explained in a podcast presented by Dwarkesh Patel that people like to get involved with chatbots of ia as a goal to their personal lives.
And since most Americans have much less friends than they would like, there is room for AI as an alternative. “As the customization loop progresses and AI begins to know you better and better, that will be really convincing,” said Zuckerberg.
But the convincing conversation does not mean a true friendship. He is not your friend. It just can't be. And the more we try to do it, the more we end up misunderstanding both AI and real friendship. Ai is a tool. A surprising tool, occasionally dazzling, often frustrating, but a tool not different from its self -fulfilled text message or its practice Swiss razor of the army. He is designed to help him and facilitate his life.
It is not a being. It has no internal monologue. Everything is surface and syntax. A robotic parrot that reads internet instead of imitating its phrases. Imitation and empathy with script are not real connections. They are just a performance without sensitivity.
True friendship is not just that someone helps you all the time, selflessly, without asking for something in return. If you send a text message to your friend and respond according to a probability matrix, they are not your friend. While I love a clean user interface as the next person, I don't confuse him with love.
In the best case, a friend AI is a pet. But not even a warm and agitated dog or a critical cat. More like a beta fish or a Tamagotchi. A reactive presence in which you can project feelings. It's always there, of course. But he doesn't care. And deep down, you know.
Therapy with AI
Meanwhile, in another podcast with Ben Thompson, Zuckerberg suggested that even if he does not have a human therapist, he must at least have an AI. The therapy is expensive, and there is a mental health crisis with more demand than supply. If a chatbot of AI can intervene and offer comfort to someone who is fighting, it is difficult to argue that it is a bad thing. And it is not a bad idea in isolation, but the details can be complicated.
While some chatbot -based well -based welfare applications have proven promised, they are only necessary due to the huge resource gap to provide mental health services. After all, a trained therapist makes more than trusting his words or a big and obvious emotional tone. They collect those not said. They recognize when a smile hides you in a spiral. They make trial calls that algorithms cannot.
The most important thing, are obliged by ethics in a way that no program can coincide. They are licensed. No matter how strict the rules of an AI are now, all that is needed is a change in programming to load their emotional luggage to a server farm. That is before mentioning the irony of a social media company that wishes to offer mental health services when their products are often linked to the worsening of the mental health of adolescents and a digital addiction that can isolate people from real friends.
I talk to AI tools every day. I think AI can be very useful. I think that my automatic coffee maker can also be very useful, even if it is more likely to yell at him faster than undressing my soul. And AI can support therapists, improve education and offer customer service at 3 am without usual music. But it is not a substitute for the human connection.
We are not at a point where I fear that everyone will withdraw from disorderly, inconvenient and defective human relations and opt for disinfected and low risk of a chatbot that always agrees with us. But that doesn't mean it's something to expect. You cannot climb the friendship, and you should not encourage people to choose software about doing real friendship work. An AI will treat you as if it treats everyone and, as Aristotle said, “a friend for everyone is a friend of any.”
