{"id":668509,"date":"2026-10-29T04:34:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-29T04:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/668509\/"},"modified":"2026-10-29T04:34:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-29T04:34:20","slug":"ai-execs-may-be-too-out-of-touch-to-build-for-the-general-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/668509\/","title":{"rendered":"AI execs may be too out of touch to build for the general public"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Yahoo CEO and early Google engineer Marissa Mayer is catching a lot of flak for how she uses AI. In an interview<\/a> about her new app Dazzle<\/a>, an AI assistant that learns from your camera roll, Mayer poses what she believes is an impressive flex for the product: It helped her come up with three bullet points about her 10-year-old daughter for a birthday presentation at school, describing her as \u201cempathetic, creative, and an animal lover.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a vague description, like a generic horoscope \u2014 it could probably describe a lot of 10-year-olds.<\/p>\n

Some onlookers, like progressive activist Leah Greenberg, marveled<\/a> that \u201cthe fact that Marissa Mayer would voluntarily disclose this to a reporter is a pretty good demonstration of how deeply the culture of Silicon Valley has diverged from the rest of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps Mayer drew so much backlash because we have repeatedly observed sheltered billionaires suggest that we outsource child-rearing<\/a> \u2014 one of life\u2019s greatest tests of patience, humility, and kindness \u2014 to a computer that is incapable of understanding<\/a> human emotion.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been primed for this frustration. Last year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told<\/a> Bored Ape owner<\/a> and late night host Jimmy Fallon on national television, \u201cI cannot imagine\u00a0\u2026 figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT.\u201d The public didn\u2019t love that comment, either, but Altman wasn\u2019t fazed by the negative<\/a> feedback. A few months ago, he said on X that a \u201ccool use case<\/a>\u201d of ChatGPT Work would be creating a podcast that talks about your kids\u2019 upcoming birthdays or soccer games and \u201cexplain[s] your kids\u2019 interests.\u201d (He was brutally ratioed<\/a> with comments<\/a> like, \u201cWhat if you just talked to your children?\u201d)<\/p>\n

After publication, Mayer defended herself in a long X post<\/a>. She claims she was not relying on Dazzle to explain her child to her, but rather, she was testing what her prototype could do \u2014 it resurfaced photos of \u201cforgotten kindergarten projects,\u201d like a \u201csnake devenomer\u201d or \u201csandcat playground,\u201d illustrating her daughter\u2019s creativity and care for animals.<\/p>\n

Fair enough. But Mayer remarks<\/a> in the same interview that people could also use her AI to outsource the mental load of \u201cfiguring out the theme for your child\u2019s birthday party.\u201d She says she\u2019s used her app to plan a playdate for her daughter, book family activities on vacation, and decide what to be for Halloween. She even proposes that her AI assistant could coordinate plans with her husband\u2019s AI assistant. When the reporter asks her if it\u2019s depressing to imagine this \u201cfrictionless future\u00a0\u2026 planned by AI,\u201d Mayer replies, \u201cI haven\u2019t really thought that through.\u201d<\/p>\n

These leaders seem to write off the naysayers as part of a small, angry fringe group. Yet a Pew Research Center study<\/a> reports that 50% of U.S. adults think that AI will reduce people\u2019s ability to form meaningful relationships. Only 5% of respondents said AI would make it easier to build these connections.<\/p>\n

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, however, joins his Silicon Valley kin in envisioning a world where our social needs are met via AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe average American I think has, it\u2019s fewer than three friends, three people they\u2019d consider friends, and the average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think it\u2019s like 15 friends,\u201d Zuckerberg said last year on a podcast<\/a>. \u201cThe average person wants more connectivity, connection than they have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg predicts that it will become more socially acceptable to outsource our emotional needs to AI therapists or even AI romantic partners. \u201cThere are all these things that are better about physical connections when you can have them,\u201d he added. \u201cBut the reality is that people\u00a0\u2026 feel more alone a lot of the time than they would like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zuckerberg goes on to explain how virtual-reality embodiments of AI avatars are only growing more realistic. Meta seems to be more keen on improving our relationships with these approximations of humans, rather than between the actual billions of humans who use its platforms each day.<\/p>\n

Maybe part of this stems from the culture of the tech industry, which prizes efficiency. People try to biohack their own bodies by optimizing their sleep schedules<\/a> with health trackers or injecting unregulated \u201cpeptide stacks<\/a>\u201d to maximize their productivity.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re building electric vehicles or computer chips, then sure, efficiency is a clear north star. But our relationships with other people are not a tech product that we\u2019ve been challenged to ship with as little capital as possible. Human relationships are inherently messy, but our connections with one another can be what gives our lives meaning. When we delegate those interactions to computers, we surrender the difficult, yet fulfilling experience of being people.<\/p>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Yahoo CEO and early Google engineer Marissa Mayer is catching a lot of flak for how she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,36643,80],"class_list":["post-668509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-marissa-mayer","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}