Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 118 posts

Re: Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

#71

Post by stuckinhell »

harddrivereque wrote: post #47

I know it is a controversial topic, but do adults really need friends? I feel like "being friends" is something from middle school where our brains were different. Now, there are colleagues, there are neighbors, there is the partner that is supposedly our only and best friend, and optionally there are pets/kids. But proper friends? In my life and in the life of people that I observe regularly, there is no real need f…

We do but in this hypercompetitive landscape. Our friends are also competitors for partners, jobs, and resources.

Which means you can't let non family members too close.

Re: Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

#72

Post by soco »

diggan wrote: post #38
pkoird wrote: post #6

> “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,” My god, he thinks people like their feed algorithm.

> My god, he thinks people like their feed algorithm. So, besides this being hilariously out of touch, how come he (seemingly) believes this? Is this perhaps what he says to the public, while believing something else? Or surrounded himself with yes-people who won't actually tell him what they think? Or is he maybe just extrapolating this from usage data and assume because X hours of their day was spent on the feed, t…

You guys can hide all the spam/non-friends stuff???

Re: Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

#73

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

People having friends sucks because, while you can shove products in between them, you can only sell them at a price justified by the value they add to the friendship, not the value of the friendship instead.

People would be willing to pay so much more if what they were paying for was the friendship instead, but so far, any attempt at taking friendships hostage and having people pay have gone nowhere.

So the logical conclusion is to just sell the friendships immediately; that way you can put a price tag directly on the friendship itself and earn much more money from it.

This is a perfectly reasonable business strategy when you're a soulless psychopath with an insatiable hunger for endless wealth.

Re: Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

#74

Post by esbeeb »

jgrahamc wrote: post #48

I don't use Facebook or Instagram but I do use WhatsApp. Recently, Meta added "Meta AI" to WhatsApp and it added itself as a participant in private chat groups I have with friends etc. If I type the @ symbol in a group to mention a participant Meta AI is in the list. I've moved every contact I can to Signal. I absolutely do not want Meta inserting some AI thing in private group chats. There's no option to disable thi…

"If I type the @ symbol in a group to mention a participant Meta AI is in the list." - I just tried it myself in a group chat, but I don't see it. Maybe it's just starting to be added? or was made invisible to being listed by "@"?

Re: Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

#75

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

harddrivereque wrote: post #47

I know it is a controversial topic, but do adults really need friends? I feel like "being friends" is something from middle school where our brains were different. Now, there are colleagues, there are neighbors, there is the partner that is supposedly our only and best friend, and optionally there are pets/kids. But proper friends? In my life and in the life of people that I observe regularly, there is no real need f…

"need", as in can't do without, no. People survive without friends.

It's a miserable life though; for one, not everyone even has a romantic partner, and even for those who do, being 100% dependent on one person is incredibly toxic.

So yea, while being friendless might not kill you, realistically, adults need friends.

> In my life and in the life of people that I observe regularly, there is no real need for friends.

My condolences. I hope one day you find people that you can actually connect with and care about each other.

Re: Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

#77

Post by ben_w »

pkoird wrote: post #6

> “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,” My god, he thinks people like their feed algorithm.

Not just that, but he's also got this weird idea that the feed algorithm understands people.

Mine right now is:

1. Friend

2. Ad: Mothers day promotion — mine died years ago

3. People you may know

4. Someone commenting on a post shared by a friend, but FB didn't expand the post so I could actually read the comment, this was just an announcement that such a comment exists

5. Friend

6. Ad: jewellery

7. One of my own posts

8. "Are you interested in this post?"

9. One of my own posts

10. People you may know

11. The same people in #2 with a different picture for the same deal

And this is relatively competent! Usually it's just an endless stream of recommendations for things I have no interest in — meme groups, or support a team I've never heard of in a sport I don't follow in a state I've not visited in a country I was last in before the pandemic, or services I can only buy if I was both a citizen of a different country and living in an additional different country, or both (but as separate ads) dick pills and boob surgery.

I may not be interested in the mother's day promo or the jewellery, but I could at least theoretically buy them if I was.

But then I refresh it, and the friend's posts are reminders to vote… in the UK local elections… which were last week… and I live in Berlin.

On the plus side, this makes it very easy for me at least to not find it at all addictive. If only everyone was so lucky…

Re: Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

#78

Post by piva00 »

diggan wrote: post #38
pkoird wrote: post #6

> “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,” My god, he thinks people like their feed algorithm.

> My god, he thinks people like their feed algorithm. So, besides this being hilariously out of touch, how come he (seemingly) believes this? Is this perhaps what he says to the public, while believing something else? Or surrounded himself with yes-people who won't actually tell him what they think? Or is he maybe just extrapolating this from usage data and assume because X hours of their day was spent on the feed, t…

I've seen similar patterns of behaviour at corporations that are extremely metrics-driven (I don't call it "data-driven" that's bullshit).

Management put up the metrics they care about and think they are doing well when those reach some thresholds. They stop thinking about the qualitative side of anything over the time, and truly believe if the metrics are going where they want to it's because people love the experience overall.

It's very McNamara fallacy-y. Even more when you get sycophants around to push whatever your vision is, even to the detriment of the overall experience.

Re: Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

#79

Post by diggan »

soco wrote: post #72
diggan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My god, he thinks people like their feed algorithm. So, besides this being hilariously out of touch, how come he (seemingly) believes this? Is this perhaps what he says to the public, while believing something else? Or surrounded himself with yes-people who won't actually tell him what they think? Or is he maybe just extrapolating this from usage data and assume because X hours of their day was spent on the feed, t…

You guys can hide all the spam/non-friends stuff???

I don't use Facebook since like a decade back, but lots of family, friends, acquaintances and neighbors do. What I've been teaching them is to block/report everything they come across that they don't like, and after a week or the experience seems to improve a bit for them.

Re: Zuckerberg's Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI

#80

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

stuckinhell wrote: post #71
harddrivereque wrote: post #47

I know it is a controversial topic, but do adults really need friends? I feel like "being friends" is something from middle school where our brains were different. Now, there are colleagues, there are neighbors, there is the partner that is supposedly our only and best friend, and optionally there are pets/kids. But proper friends? In my life and in the life of people that I observe regularly, there is no real need f…

We do but in this hypercompetitive landscape. Our friends are also competitors for partners, jobs, and resources. Which means you can't let non family members too close.

No, it's the opposite, actually. Friends don't compete, they cooperate. Turning cooperation into competition is how you execute a divide and conquer strategy. If a group is too strong, you convince them that they are each other's true enemy; once they're at each other, you swoop in.

Most "competition" in our modern world is artificial. Try figuring out who benefits from it and where this mentality originates. You'll find that those two tend to overlap :)

Post reply on HN