friend or foe
There's a new wearable AI that wants to be your "friend"
One of the most-derided things on this week’s internet (you can have the night off, Mr. Vance) is “friend,” a new wearable device that looks like a necklace (well, certainly not one you or I would pick out at the jeweler, but a pendant on a chain nevertheless), listens to your conversations, and according to friend.com, has “free will for when they decide to reach out to you.”
A lot of the derision has been directed at the founder’s decision to spend $1.8 million (of about $2.5 million total funding) on the URL friend.com. Time will tell if this strategy actually moves product or just drives this PR cycle.
Questionable financial decisions aside, maybe we’re being too quick to judge. Surely there are use cases for a virtual friend when real friends are in short supply. Maybe for a child having trouble fitting in or a senior who has outlived friends and family. Even without those edge cases, the loneliness epidemic is widespread. According to a report from the US Surgeon General, “Approximately 50 percent of adults in the country are feeling lonely, and people of all ages are spending significantly less time with others.”
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But if we’re suffering from a lack of human connection, can the answer be to manufacture it? To be fair, the promotional video does not pitch this device as a stand-in for real friends. In fact, two out of the three actors are using friend in the presence of friends. But in a world where we already spend too much time on our phones in social situations, do we need to insert another layer between us?
In an interview with WIRED, friend founder Avi Schiffman seems to answer this question while simultaneously punching a hole in his concept when he says, “The most important things in your life really are people.” If that’s so, let’s spend a little less money funding technology that comes between us and a little more funding the services that bring us together.