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Ai is wonderful but it should never replace friends. I detest Mark Zuckerberg's claim that AI will replace friends, that's simply not happening. But AI is wonderful at tasks like upscaling or even meme generation.


Mark Zuckerberg already managed to replaced friendship with political outrage (Facebook) and with toxic parasocial relationships (Instagram), for a big chunk of society.

Anyone doubting that he can do the same with AI has too much faith in humanity.


Maybe he'll get it when he has to manually type in "secretly let me win" into the prompt when he iss playing Catan with his AI friend. Not likely, but at least the level of how sad that will be is commensurate with his billions.


I'd vote for you if you ever ran for office somewhere I could vote.


I've been talking with AI during my morning commute (car) recently, instead of listening to something. It's a great partner to bounce ideas off of. I don't have any friends that can or are willing to engage with ideas to the extent AI does.


Isn't AI's infinite willingness and lack of inhibition sort of the thing that people are increasingly voicing concern over?

Put differently, maybe there's something fundamentally unhealthy to having a "discussion" with something that never says no.

Hard to say if your friends are reasonable or not without knowing what ideas your hoping to engage with them in (or the manner of said engagement).


As usual a balance is needed. There is also a concern that society (friends, colleagues) that always shuts down your ideas just because they are different thus reducing creativity and progress. Sometimes you need a way to develop your ideas without the outright rejection and sometimes you need the filter of society to see if the ideas really hold up. Usually the time where ideas are most fragile to being destroyed is when they are just developed. Perfect time to brain storm and increase the strength of those ideas with AI before taking it to the filter of society.


As long as you are consciously aware you're not really talking to another human but just entertaining yourself I don't see the harm tbqh.

Anything can become addictive, also i'd say given the costs of operating llm inference the labs themselves when offering the products try to limit your usage at different levels, ChatGPT for example will recommend you take a break and chill if you go hours with it (even with a 200 plan)

I don't see how using an LLM is that different from surfing Wikipedia or Google, in all cases the computer is just giving me outputs i demand it from, in some or other shape, and can be abused etc


> Put differently, maybe there's something fundamentally unhealthy to having a "discussion" with something that never says no.

Well, XKCD suggested an alternative.[1]

[1] https://xkcd.com/1027/


I used ChatGPT as a tour guide when I was traveling last year. It was helpful to identify places I should stop to take a look, explaining local flora, fauna and geology.

I'd rather have had a real tour guide, but for the price it was quite handy.


I think this is the economics that will play out more and more: a real human will provide better quality or more preferable services, but AI - maybe with a robot - will provide good enough for the price alternatives.

If your choice is no doctor or an AI doctor for cheap, or a very expensive human doctor, the winner is: AI doctor.


I haven’t thought of talking to an LLM in the car but I do like chatting. I treat it like a conversational Wikipedia.


I would not talk to my friends about the stuff I bounce on AI. My meanest brain dead ideas get a rebuke, and I fight back to test grounds. I'd rightly get shamed for inflicting such undeveloped trash on anyone.


it's not engaging or bouncing. it's simply responding as likely as it can to what would go after your sentences.


I truly don't believe this kind of pedantic correction adds anything to the conversation. We _all_ know how they work technically, it's been beaten to death.


I disagree. People think they know how it works, but then there's an article that says AI is a "black box" that will destroy humanity because no one knows how it works.

So, do we know how it works or don't we?


I think the problem is "how it technically works" to "how it feels" are different things in this case


I think there's also a problem that some people -- even on here -- seem to think that there is no fundamental difference between how a human engages in conversation vs an LLM, and thus talking to humans doesn't provide much value. "How it feels" is starting to bleed into how some of us think about our interactions with each other.


In what I found he didn’t say “replace” but “add more”; it is still chilling and I detest it.

Especially in the current incarnation of AI, where they are more or less controlled by corporations and government.

> The average American has "three people that they would consider friends," he said. "And the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it's, like, 15."

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/05/09/mark-zuckerberg-says-ai-...


> And the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it's, like, 15

Research seems to point at more like 3-5 https://www.socialconnectionguidelines.org/en/evidence-brief...


That begs a question: would you rather have no friends, or a few AI friends?


> AI friends

No such thing. It's a mechanical parrot that replies with the most likely response given an input.

It's not a person. It's not a friend. It's not going to hold you while you cry. It's not going to invite you to its wedding. It has no independent life or thought or plans. It's not real.


What about a dog?


> What about a dog?

Despite the nickname "man's best friend", they are in fact pets, not friends.


hold up, now you've gone too far.


Look, I'm not saying a dog wouldn't invite you to it's wedding if it could. But it can't. Dogs are loving and wonderful companions but they aren't people so they really can't fill that niche as a friend.


Wait until we have ChatGPT dog collars to both translate and improvise conversations with our dog buddies.


Dogs are pets not friends


Mine is absolutely a friend.

At the same time a dog does not pretend to be a human, isn’t controlled by a corporation, and is a living thing with its own needs.


Raises or asks, not begs, but in response: no friends.

AI is not capable of being my friend, as it doesn't pass the first, most basic requirement: it isn't a person.

Would I welcome more people into my life as friends? Sure. But while I cherish the friends I have, I certainly don't need more. Not just to "have".

And I sure as hell have no need or desire for the empty "friendship" of spicy auto complete.


I’d say if you want then go ahead and get an AI friend. But also don’t confuse it with a human (or a living being).


I cannot express how deeply disgusted the idea of a chatbot "friend" makes me

We're not talking about a sentient machine like Data from Star Trek, we're so so far from that still

Edit: it's super important to remember that any and all of the big commercially available AI out there are.. commercial. They're owned by companies. Unless you run them on your own hardware someone else is ultimately the owner of your "AI friend".

That should be a huge alarm bell in your head. Corporations are not your friends.


>We're not talking about a sentient machine like Data from Star Trek, we're so so far from that still

How can you know how far from, close to, or beyond the line we are?

Also, I'm pretty sure Claude understands humans a lot more than Data does.


> How can you know how far from, close to, or beyond the line we are?

Your lack of comprehension does not outweigh the understanding of those who do. There is a lot of research out there on the nature of LLMs. None of it indicates they are sentient like a human. Not a single bit of it.

Go do some research.


Oh.


you said no friends twice


From PG's comment on Zuck‘had no concept of small talk`, that's on par for his view on friends.

https://fortune.com/2026/03/23/meta-cofounder-mark-zuckerber...


It feels like controlling an infinite genie. if you control it well, it is extremely powerful, but it will take anything literally in many cases. But if you master it, and treat it as a compiler of intent, using Plan mode appropriately, you can accelerate and punch far above your weight class.


need one for brain plasicity. it would be nice to be able to easily learn a foreign language or musical instrument naturally.


There is one!

Ketamin should have huge impacts on neuro/brain plasticity when used properly (i.e. in therapy)


Psychedelics are several orders of magnitude stronger on the plasticity front.

In therapy as well.


So is ketamine but we haven't explored it more for other brain functions where it can act as a psychoplastogen eg reopening critical periods of visual learning.


Psilocybin has this effect. Source: I can't remember where I read it, so low confidence.


Sure, but what kind of protocol are you going to use to actually reap the benefits of these transient neuroplasticity effects, especially for learning something new like math or piano as an adult?

Same with ketamine. It's not like you can take it a couple of times and open some magic window where everything suddenly becomes easier to learn. From my personal experience and surface-level understanding of the current research, psychedelics(including ketamine) seem to temporarily relax hardened beliefs/priors and rigid neural pathways, which can help you see things from a fresh perspective. But learning something substantial like math or a new language after you've passed the most plastic stages of development is still going to take much longer than what these drugs can realistically help with.

They might make you see something differently or even get you extremely interested in it, but sustaining that interest and consolidating the knowledge or skill is still slow compared with childhood/adolescence. Of course, it depends a lot on what you're learning. For example, crystallized intelligence and sufficient motivation can make some things much easier to learn as an adult, but many useful things are also just boring to learn when you no longer have a childlike plastic brain or an environment built around constant learning.

Edit: Theoretically, you could accelerate learning by taking psychedelics/ketamine at a set frequency but it's a huge gamble because of their risk profile. eg. HPPD/trauma risk with classic psychedelics and bladder/neurotoxicity risk with ketamine if you get addicted or take it too frequently.


I don't know. I was just suggesting something that may have an effect. BTW I would be very hesitant to take anything that "opens some magic window where everything suddenly becomes easier to learn" if it existed. Increasing neuroplasticity to that degree is unlikely to be without significant side effects.


Easily? Have you ever actually learned a second language or an instrument as a child?


Vs as an adult. Yes it's hard as a kid, but as an adult it's even harder.


Yeah, for simple calculations on medical data or whatnot, FHE is a highly useful tool. I do wonder, will indistinguishability obfuscation or witness encryption ever be a viable scheme?


all we need now is indistinguishable obfuscation


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