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Don Carpenter is president of the board of directors of the Maine-based Rural Youth Initiative. Meg Taft is the initiative’s executive director.
Mark Zuckerberg’s latest vision for the future — where AI friends replace human ones — is not a solution to the loneliness epidemic our country is facing. It’s the logical next step for a tech industry that essentially created the wound and now wants to profit from the bandages.
In a recent blitz of interviews, Zuckerberg painted a world where most of our relationships — friends, therapists, even coworkers — are not real people, but bots. His rationale? Americans are lonelier than ever. We crave connection. His answer? Synthetic relationships wrapped in empathy-coded algorithms. Monetized vulnerability. Friendship-as-a-service.
This isn’t healing. It’s harm at scale.
The idea that chatbots can substitute for connection illuminates a profound misunderstanding of what it means to be human. It suggests that intimacy can be simulated, that emotional safety can be programmed, that being known — truly known — can be achieved through a product update.
It can’t.
And the proof is in our communities, not in the corporate tech’s code. We work in youth development in rural Maine. Every day, we see the real antidote to loneliness: deep, enduring, authentic relationships. Not artificial ones. Not transactional ones. Real ones.
If Zuckerberg is offering Artificial Intimacy, at the Rural Youth Institute, we are creating the real AI: the Aspirations Incubator.
Our AI isn’t a chatbot. It’s a human-powered model rooted in three things Zuckerberg’s empire has steadily eroded: depth, breadth, and duration of human connection. The Aspirations Incubator supports long-term, authentic relationship-centered approaches that pair young people with trusted adult mentors, peer support systems, and community engagement that fosters identity, confidence, and purpose.
Where tech platforms monetize attention, we invest in presence. Where algorithms mirror your feed, we reflect your humanity.
We believe the antidote to synthetic connection isn’t better AI friends, it’s no AI friends. It’s real friends. It’s trusted adults who show up again and again. It’s creating spaces where young people feel seen, not surveilled. It’s youth programs that don’t just check a box, but walk with a young person through middle school, high school, and beyond.
Zuckerberg argues that most people want 15 friends but only have three, and that AI can fill the gap. That’s a damning admission, not a business opportunity. We don’t need to simulate relationships. We need to restore the social infrastructure that makes real ones possible.
Here’s the catch: Zuckerberg has the money, the microphone, and the audience. We have something more powerful, but harder to scale: authenticity.
To meet this moment, we need a counterforce. Urgently. We need investors and philanthropists who will pour resources into programs like the Aspirations Incubator, which are not speculative tech bets, but proven interventions grounded in evidence, relational science, and common sense.
We need to stop asking how to make AI more human and start asking how to make our communities more humane.
Let’s be clear: we are undoubtedly at a moral crossroads. Do we want a future where a teenager’s best friend is a subscription-based chatbot, or where they are part of a community network of mentors, peers, and purpose-driven adults who help them write a better life story?
One of those futures is real. The other is a hallucination.
Let’s build that real future together.
