‘Average American has fewer than 3 friends’: Mark Zuckerberg tells Indian-origin podcast host

As someone who built a fortune connecting people with his social media network, Mark Zuckerberg knows a thing or two about the power of relationships - and how technology can be used to shape, scale and sometimes even redefine them. In a podcast interview with Indian-American host Dwarkesh Patel, the founder of Facebook opened up about the possibility of AI replacing human connections, among other things.

India-born Dwarkesh Patel, 23, asked Mark Zuckerberg how AI companies can ensure that people form healthy relationships with chatbots.

Zuckerberg replied saying that AI relationships will become more common as AIs get better, and rather than judging them too early, we should observe how people actually use them. He believes people generally know what's valuable to them, and AI can genuinely help with things like tough conversations or loneliness.

He also noted how the average American has fewer than three friends, but actually wants to have 15 meaningful friendships.

Zuckerberg’s response

“There are a lot of questions that you only can really answer as you start seeing the behaviors… I also think being too prescriptive upfront and saying, ‘We think these things are not good’ often cuts off value,” the CEO of Meta replied.

“I do think people are going to use AI for a lot of these social tasks. Already, one of the main things we see people using Meta AI for is talking through difficult conversations they need to have with people in their lives. ‘I'm having this issue with my girlfriend. Help me have this conversation.’ Or, ‘I need to have a hard conversation with my boss at work. How do I have that conversation?’ That's pretty helpful. As the personalization loop kicks in and the AI starts to get to know you better and better, that will just be really compelling,” he added.

On friendships with AI

Zuckerberg noted how an average American has fewer than three friends but often wants more.

“Here’s one stat from working on social media for a long time that I always think is crazy. The average American has fewer than three friends, fewer than three people they would consider friends,” he told Patel.

“And the average person has demand for meaningfully more. I think it's something like 15 friends or something. At some point you're like, ‘All right, I'm just too busy, I can't deal with more people.’

“But the average person wants more connection than they have,” he said.

So is AI going to replace real-world connections? Not according to the billionaire.

“There's a lot of concern people raise like, ‘Is this going to replace real-world, physical, in-person connections?’ And my default is that the answer to that is probably not,” he explained.