More than two decades ago, Facebook (now Meta) promised to usher in a new age of connection and community—“but a new era of deeper, better human fellowship has yet to arrive,” Damon Beres writes. Now Mark Zuckerberg and other tech giants are heralding a solution to that social gap: AI chatbots.
Zuckerberg has been open about his ambition to address the human loneliness epidemic. Although the Facebook co-founder has said that AI probably won’t “replace in-person connections or real-life connections”—at least not right away—he has spoken of the potential for AI therapists and girlfriends to be embodied in virtual space.
Meta is far from the only tech company pushing its AI chatbots. Instagram’s feed is interrupted by prompts to “Chat with AIs,” while Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have infiltrated classrooms and workplaces, and “Amazon’s ‘Rufus’ bot is eager to talk with you about poster board, nutritional supplements, compact Bibles, plumbing snakes,” Beres writes. The most popular bots are not explicitly designed for companionship, but “nonetheless, users have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize the technology, because it sounds like a person.”
Most chatbots have memories that allow them to become far more engaging as users interact with them; but they lack the friction that is inevitable in human relationships, Beres argues. Friction serves “as a check on selfish behavior or inflated self-regard; as a spur to look more closely at other people; as a way to better understand the foibles and fears we all share.” AI, however, is sycophantic by design: “Indulgence of the user is a feature, not a bug,” Beres continues. Chatbots “enable something new: They allow you to talk forever to no one other than yourself.”
“Many of us may simply slip into relationships with bots that we first used as helpers or entertainment, just as we were lulled into submission by algorithmic feeds and the glow of the smartphone screen,” Beres continues. “This seems likely to change our society at least as much as the social-media era has.”
Read more of Beres’s report on how AI will reshape our relationships here: [https://theatln.tc/jhDF2PdA](https://theatln.tc/jhDF2PdA)
— Jesse Convertino, senior editor, audience and engagement, *The Atlantic*
DeltaForceFish on
People still want social media. They just want it like the days of myspace and the first couple years of facebook. Friends only. No businesses. No algorithms. We only see our friends. And we can rank them so they know when they pissed us off.
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More than two decades ago, Facebook (now Meta) promised to usher in a new age of connection and community—“but a new era of deeper, better human fellowship has yet to arrive,” Damon Beres writes. Now Mark Zuckerberg and other tech giants are heralding a solution to that social gap: AI chatbots.
Zuckerberg has been open about his ambition to address the human loneliness epidemic. Although the Facebook co-founder has said that AI probably won’t “replace in-person connections or real-life connections”—at least not right away—he has spoken of the potential for AI therapists and girlfriends to be embodied in virtual space.
Meta is far from the only tech company pushing its AI chatbots. Instagram’s feed is interrupted by prompts to “Chat with AIs,” while Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have infiltrated classrooms and workplaces, and “Amazon’s ‘Rufus’ bot is eager to talk with you about poster board, nutritional supplements, compact Bibles, plumbing snakes,” Beres writes. The most popular bots are not explicitly designed for companionship, but “nonetheless, users have a natural tendency to anthropomorphize the technology, because it sounds like a person.”
Most chatbots have memories that allow them to become far more engaging as users interact with them; but they lack the friction that is inevitable in human relationships, Beres argues. Friction serves “as a check on selfish behavior or inflated self-regard; as a spur to look more closely at other people; as a way to better understand the foibles and fears we all share.” AI, however, is sycophantic by design: “Indulgence of the user is a feature, not a bug,” Beres continues. Chatbots “enable something new: They allow you to talk forever to no one other than yourself.”
“Many of us may simply slip into relationships with bots that we first used as helpers or entertainment, just as we were lulled into submission by algorithmic feeds and the glow of the smartphone screen,” Beres continues. “This seems likely to change our society at least as much as the social-media era has.”
Read more of Beres’s report on how AI will reshape our relationships here: [https://theatln.tc/jhDF2PdA](https://theatln.tc/jhDF2PdA)
— Jesse Convertino, senior editor, audience and engagement, *The Atlantic*
People still want social media. They just want it like the days of myspace and the first couple years of facebook. Friends only. No businesses. No algorithms. We only see our friends. And we can rank them so they know when they pissed us off.