AI execs may be too out of touch to build for the general public
Former Yahoo CEO and early Google engineer Marissa Mayer is catching a lot of flak for how she uses AI. Inan interviewabout her new app Dazzle, 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 āempathetic, creative, and an animal lover.ā Itās a vague description, like a generic horoscope ā it could probably describe a lot of 10-year-olds. Some onlookers, like progressive activist Leah Greenberg,marveledthat āthe 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.ā "She thought it was perfect."www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/sā¦ Perhaps Mayer drew so much backlash because we have repeatedly observed sheltered billionaires suggest that we outsourcechild-rearingā one of lifeās greatest tests of patience, humility, and kindness ā to a computer that isincapable of understandinghuman emotion. Weāve been primed for this frustration. Last year, OpenAI CEO Sam AltmantoldBored Ape ownerand late night host Jimmy Fallon on national television, āI cannot imagineĀ ā¦ figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT.ā The public didnāt love that comment, either, but Altman wasnāt fazed by thenegativefeedback. A few months ago, he said on X that a ācool use caseā of ChatGPT Work would be creating a podcast that talks about your kidsā upcoming birthdays or soccer games and āexplain[s] your kidsā interests.ā (He was brutallyratioedwithcommentslike, āWhat if you just talked to your children?ā) After publication, Mayer defended herself in a longX post. She claims she was not relying on Dazzle to explain her child to her, but rather, she was testing what her prototype could do ā it resurfaced photos of āforgotten kindergarten projects,ā like a āsnake devenomerā or āsandcat playground,ā illustrating her daughterās creativity and care for animals. Fair enough. But Mayerremarksin the same interview that people could also use her AI to outsource the mental load of āfiguring out the theme for your childās birthday party.ā She says sheās 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 husbandās AI assistant. When the reporter asks her if itās depressing to imagine this āfrictionless futureĀ ā¦ planned by AI,ā Mayer replies, āI havenāt really thought that through.ā These leaders seem to write off the naysayers as part of a small, angry fringe group. Yet a Pew Research Centerstudyreports that 50% of U.S. adults think that AI will reduce peopleās ability to form meaningful relationships. Only 5% of respondents said AI would make it easier to build these connections. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, however, joins his Silicon Valley kin in envisioning a world where our social needs are met via AI. āThe average American I think has, itās fewer than three friends, three people theyād consider friends, and the average person has demand for meaningfully more, I think itās like 15 friends,ā Zuckerberg said last year on apodcast. āThe average person wants more connectivity, connection than they have.ā Zuckerberg predicts that it will become more socially acceptable to outsource our emotional needs to AI therapists or even AI romantic partners. āThere are all these things that are better about physical connections when you can have them,ā he added. āBut the reality is that peopleĀ ā¦ feel more alone a lot of the time than they would like.ā 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. Maybe part of this stems from the culture of the tech industry, which prizes efficiency. People try to biohack their own bodies by optimizing theirsleep scheduleswith health trackers or injecting unregulated āpeptide stacksā to maximize their productivity. If youāre 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 weāve 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.
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