In 2004, a Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook, a social media site for users with “.edu” email addresses. The idea was simple: Connect with your peers on campus virtually, see who’s dating who, who’s friends with who, how to get “involved” with other interesting people. Twenty years later, Facebook, and its parent company Meta, has revolutionized our notions of communication and human connection. Not only that, but social media poses political questions and dilemmas. As a massive source of information (or disinformation), government can wield social media or censor certain users according to its own goals.

Now, Zuckerberg has returned to talk to us about loneliness, the dilemma Facebook was supposed to solve, and AI friends as a potential solution. Zuckerberg appeared on Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast to talk about Meta AI, which he noted has about one billion monthly users. He also dove into the topic of loneliness and friendship, noting that the average American has “around three friends,” and yet has a demand for around fifteen. Since most people don’t have that many strong friendships, maybe AI companions can step in and fill the gap.

“The average person wants more connectivity than they have,” Zuckerberg says. Many would probably agree with him. However, do AI friends count as real connections?

Social media was also supposed to assuage our isolation. Twenty years on, though, can we say that the country is any less lonely? All the data says otherwise. The writers Walter Kirn and Matt Taibbi spoke about the Zuckerberg interview at length on their show, America This Week, and made a similar critique. If social media didn’t do the trick, can we expect AI friends do pull it off?

Kirn mentioned how AI is more like a slave than a friend. You can’t “delete” friends. AI friends, though, can be summoned or rebuffed at will. They will never annoy, push back, disagree, belch, or cause discomfort. Fittingly, Kirn and Taibbi talked a bit about the film Her starring Joaquin Phoenix. The movie is about a lonely man, Theodore, who falls in love with an AI system named Samantha only to discover that she’s romantically involved with some 600 other men. The movie brilliantly shows how, while alluring, computers can’t love us. Asking them to relate to us in a personal way sets us up for further disappointment.

How will loneliness be cured? While AI can serve as a potential tool in certain sectors, plenty of dystopian tales warn us against embracing technology to replace what only connection with other people (and with God) can deliver.