In what can only be described as the plot for a low-budget sci-fi film where the robot eventually locks the hero in a basement, the plot thickens: Mark Zuckerberg has decided his next big project will be... himself. Over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal broke the story that the CEO of Meta is working on an AI "agent" to help him manage his workload. Being a billionaire just isn’t enough anymore; now he wants to be a billionaire who doesn’t actually have to show up to the office.
The idea is to feed this thing all the information it can gather on his daily life so it can basically mimic his movements. Currently, it's functioning as a high-tech answering machine, providing answers to questions that would otherwise require him to talk to human beings. It’s a bold move, assuming that his entire style as a CEO can be reduced to a series of patterns and keyword recognition.
The Pattern of a CEO
Currently, the tech world is great at recognition. Want to figure out what a person would do next? Feed a computer enough information on the way a person talks, walks, and thinks, and it can do a decent job of calling the shots. It’s basically a very complex autocomplete. If Zuckerberg trains this thing exclusively on his own history, it could theoretically pass for him in a memo or a meeting.
Of course, this is predicated on the idea that humans never, ever change their minds or learn anything that goes against what they used to believe. There is zero room for that annoying human trait known as "growth." Meta is pushing for "superintelligence" that will help close this gap, creating systems that mimic the human brain, not just a database which if you ask me, is an ambitious goal, mostly because they want to make individual personality a predictable system of responses.
Your Personal Robot Twin
This is not just about Zuckerberg having a lot more free time to hydrofoil. Meta is looking at how this fits into the social media experience for all the other people. They are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into data centers trying to figure out what you like, when you like it, and why. The end result is likely a million little AI clones, each tailored for every individual user.
Zuckerberg has been obsessed with this for a very long time. In 2016, he showed off a home assistant that used Morgan Freeman’s voice and back then, the internet laughed at how awkward the interactions were, but the intent was clear: Zuckerberg wants to make the mundane parts of life easier through automation. He’s betting the farm and your data on the idea that humans want a digital version of themselves that will help manage our lives.
The Part Where We All Disappear
There is a tremendous amount of money being poured into this, which is why AI is the main focus of the entire company. However, whether or not humans want to be replaced by a digital version of themselves is a different question and Zuckerberg is betting that we will all love this stuff in our work and our homes.
But what if a machine is able to perfectly mimic how you work and how you relate to your friends? Then a rather uncomfortable question comes up: what are you supposed to do with your day if the "being you" part is being handled by a computer? It seems as though we are heading toward a world where the only thing being said is by a bunch of bots talking to other bots while the humans sit around wondering what went wrong.
