Transcript - America This Week, May 2, 2025: "Are 'AI Friends' the Ultimate Surveillance Tool?"

Mark Zuckerberg's proposed solution to the loneliness problem heralds a new era in data collection. Plus "Time Enough at Last," by Lynn Venable

Matt Taibbi: All right. Welcome to America This Week. I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, you are back at home base.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, I’m back in the land of society and marriage and all the things that moderate one’s latent psychotic tendencies. And my wife has determined that I speak differently than I did when I last saw her a few weeks ago. And my mouth makes different sounds, she said. And I said, it’s because I’ve had no practice speaking for weeks. This has been the longest I’ve gone without conversations. So if people are noticing that out there, expect it to abate.

Matt Taibbi: I mean, did it sound drastically different? Did you sound like a raccoon when you first came back?

Walter Kirn: Well, to me, I sound no different, of course, being quite used to residence in my own mind and mouth. But to my wife who sees me at discrete intervals when she’s traveling, there’s been a marked change.

Matt Taibbi: Well...

Walter Kirn: That’s always disturbing to find out that you’re making different sounds, you speak differently, may have adopted a slightly different personality all through solitude, which we’re told is a good thing. But, I’m not sure. We were going to talk about AI friends today, and I’ve wondered if having them in the meantime during this sojourn in the wilderness, this Thoreau-like writing jag I’ve been on, if AI friends prancing around the room in convincing 3D would of accelerated or retarded the process of my becoming loopy.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, it could go either way. I think it probably depends on your underlying psychological situation. But I don’t really think it makes a difference. I think if you’re inclined to go the all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy route, you’re going there anyway sooner or later.

Walter Kirn: Yeah.

Matt Taibbi: But as you hinted, yeah, we’re going to talk about, we’re going to do something a little different this week and it’s not like it’s not in the news, it is in the news. It’s just not the hot button partisan topic of the week. At least not yet, it’ll get there.

Walter Kirn: It’s trending toward partisanship. It’s acquiring a partisan coding, as everything does.

Matt Taibbi: Everything has to.

Walter Kirn: They just haven’t quite figured out exactly in what way it’s the current administration’s fault. Exactly in what way it will lead to a fascist autocracy, but we’re getting there.

Matt Taibbi: Right, right. Exactly. So I guess let’s start with all our old friend and former WEF Young Leader program completer Mark Zuckerberg, who has occupied a variety of roles in American culture in the last eight years. It’s really interesting, isn’t it? He’s gone from being a villain to one side to a villain on the other to being a villain back on the other side.

Walter Kirn: Well, for me, he’s always been a villain since I saw him. But a super-villain is one who changes form slightly in order to win different audiences’ trust so he can victimize whole new groups in new ways. And when I saw him in this latest video with his chunky SoHo art gallerist glasses.

Matt Taibbi: I love it. I love the look. Yeah.

Walter Kirn: Yeah. So most recently, he was an MMA fighter, a participant in sort of esoteric martial arts, a guy on a one-man mission to raise his own testosterone through natural means.

Matt Taibbi: Just ready to go bow hunting for something.

Walter Kirn: Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Drag home a wild pig. But now this is that plus Rachel Maddow. And I think he wants to be known as an intellectual who’s leading us somewhere, a visionary. I’m sure everyone in his position has Elon envy at this point. He can’t take us to Mars, but he can take us to virtual Mars, and he seems to indicate that may be more important.

Matt Taibbi: Yeah, let’s just listen to what he has to say. But you’re right. I have some thoughts about that. But he’s going to talk about computers possibly as a cure for loneliness, which is very ironic considering the origin story of Facebook to begin with. But let’s listen to what he says.

Mark Zuckerberg: I think as the personalization loop kicks in and the AI just starts to get to know you better and better, I think that will just be really compelling. One thing just from working on social media for a long time is... There’s this stat that I always think is crazy. The average American, I think has, I think it’s fewer than three friends, three people that they’d consider friends and the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it’s like 15 friends or something. I guess there’s probably some point where you’re like, all right, I’m just too busy. I can’t deal with more people. But the average person wants more connectivity, connection than they have. So there’s a lot of questions that people ask of stuff like, okay, is this going to replace in-person connections?

Matt Taibbi: Can we pause for a second?

Walter Kirn: It’ll augment it. It always augments it, right?

Matt Taibbi: When he says this, he’s talking about AI friends.

Walter Kirn: Now through what dark DARPA study or Johns Hopkins research, did they come up with Americans having space or demand for 15 friends.

Matt Taibbi: Friend demand.

Walter Kirn: Did they study people who have 13 friends and say, I’m almost there. And then with two more, they say, stop it. Stop it. People were pushing me around. I feel crowded.

Matt Taibbi: I have unused friend capacity.

Walter Kirn: And then they push them up to 20 and they start fighting. It does remind you of the ‘60s, 1950s MK Ultra style programs in which they made these very specific claims about the human psyche. He doesn’t seem to question at all the research, probably because it suits him. If there are, what, 12 friends per American now and Americans are in an average deficit of 12, and he can provide, well, maybe all 12, but certainly half of them from his, I don’t know, lab or on the computer. I don’t know what kind of amplitude and reality level will constitute a human-like friend. I mean, they have to be able to do sort of electro stimulation of our skin. Can they just be a cartoon? Must they be 3D, holographic? Do they need to burst into the room at random times in the manner of independent human beings?

Because a friend really isn’t a slave, and I suspect he’s kind of talking about slave like beings. Friends are often busy, and I have a feeling that Friend-books or whatever they’re going to call them will always be available. My joke on Twitter was, can they move your couch? Which is my test of friendship. Will they move your couch?

Matt Taibbi: Will they move your coach?

Walter Kirn: But he’s very optimistic and I want to hear his answer about whether they’ll replace human beings because I know won’t, not in his mind. I mean, he hopes they will. It’s his unspoken, deepest desire. But he’s going to reassure us, I have a feeling.