Have You Considered Not Polluting the Water?

"This summer, one company took Zuckerberg's vision to its logical conclusion and began shipping a device called "Friend" to the public. An AI-powered pendant, Friend eavesdrops on its wearer's activities and comments on them via text messages. A trailer features users speaking aloud to their disembodied confidant during meals, hikes, and gaming sessions, as though it were as real as the people around them, whom they are largely ignoring. "How's the falafel?" the Friend messages a young woman, as she dines alone."

"Slowly but surely over the past two decades, in-person interactions have been swapped for poor digital simulacra of them, replacing thick social ties with thin ones. Addictive social-media platforms have become substitutes for phone calls and face-to-face exchanges. Streaming entertainment has decreased demand for movie theaters. To-go dining apps have gradually replaced restaurant and bar table service with takeout. Many people now lack friends"

Silicon Valley promotes AI companions as remedies for social disconnection while data show many Americans have very few friends and feel chronically lonely. Companies are releasing products like Friend, an AI pendant that listens to wearers and sends text comments, portraying intimate, real-time interaction with a disembodied confidant. Heavy investment and marketing push these devices as personalized social systems. Meanwhile, technology-driven changes over decades—social media, streaming, and on-demand delivery—have shifted thick social ties to thin digital connections. Those same technologies undermine shared public spaces and face-to-face exchanges, leaving many people with diminished close friendships.

Read at The Atlantic