"In the Patel interview, Zuckerberg cites a statistic “from working on social media for a long time” that “the average American has fewer than three friends, fewer than three people they would consider friends. And the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it's something like 15 friends or something.” The closest source I could find where he could be pulling this statistic from is a study commissioned by virtual therapy company Talkspace in 2024, which specifically surveyed men, and found that men have five “general” friends, three close friends and two best friends, on average.
Zuckerberg goes on to say:
“But the average person wants more connection than they have. There's a lot of concern people raise like, ’Is this going to replace real-world, physical, in-person connections?’ And my default is that the answer to that is probably not. 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 as much connection as they want. They feel more alone a lot of the time than they would like.”
He said he thinks things like AI companions have a “stigma” around them now, but that society will eventually “find the vocabulary” to describe why people who turn to chatbots for socialization are “rational” for doing so.
His view of real-world connections seems to have shifted a lot in recent years, after lighting billions of dollars on fire for a failed metaverse gambit. Patel asked Zuckerberg about his role as CEO, and he said—among things like managing across projects and infrastructure—that he sees his place in the company as a tastemaker. “Then there's this question around taste and quality. When is something good enough that we want to ship it? In general, I'm the steward of that for the company,” he said. "
https://www.404media.co/mark-zuckerberg-ai-chatbot-friends-interview-podcast/
#AI #GenerativeAI #Meta #Facebook #ChatBots #Psychology #AICompanions