Mark Zuckerberg destroyed friendship. Now he wants to replace it with AI.

Jeff Chiu/AP Photo; Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI

Forget those 700 Facebook friends you've largely neglected since college. In Mark Zuckerberg's latest vision for the future, we'll be filling our empty hours chatting away with our generative AI buddies. In an era when people spend more time alone than ever before, Meta's CEO is preaching not just about the power of his company to connect us to one another — but also about luring our attention to new, fake friends.

In an interview last week with the tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel...