Fellow regards, I have a theory that Zuckerberg is about to spend the GDP of a developing nation trying to solve a problem his company is financially incentivized to never solve.
The entire premise of AI is that you can accomplish shit faster. Research something in 10 seconds. Find what you need. Automate tedious tasks. Close the app and go touch grass.
Meta's entire business model is making sure you do absolutely none of those things.
Exhibit A: Instagram. Want to listen to a video with your screen off? Nice try buddy. Get those eyeballs back on the screen, daddy Zuck has ad impressions to serve.
Exhibit B: Facebook Marketplace. This company employs some of the smartest engineers on earth and somehow searching for a $200 couch within 15 miles returns a jet ski in Delaware, three Temu dropshippers and a 2006 Nissan Altima with no title. You think this is an accident? I have no proof but I refuse to believe the company building frontier AI cannot implement a fucking distance filter.
Exhibit C: Facebook itself. An industrial-scale retirement home dopamine dispenser. Your uncle is on hour four of watching AI-generated murder documentaries narrated by a British robot while arguing with a fake veteran about immigration. The algorithm has determined his remaining cognitive capacity is worth approximately $0.17 CPM.
And now Zuck has discovered AI shopping assistants.
Brother. Nobody wants to discuss the philosophical implications of a toaster with your chatbot. I want the cheapest toaster delivered by Thursday. Why are we having a conversation.
Here is the actual investment thesis for the illiterates:
The 2010s internet monetized attention. The AI internet should monetize outcomes.
Google wanted ten blue links. Facebook wanted infinite scroll. Instagram wanted your eyeballs. TikTok wanted your entire frontal lobe.
AI theoretically eliminates the middleman between wanting something and getting it.
Unfortunately Meta IS the fucking middleman.
If AI makes shopping, searching, and consuming information dramatically faster, what happens to a business that makes money when those activities take longer?
You have a trillion-dollar company spending astronomical amounts on compute to build technology that, if it actually works in the consumer's interest, undermines the engagement economics of its own products.
It's like Marlboro spending $100 billion developing a cure for nicotine addiction and then trying to monetize the cure with cigarette ads.
TLDR: Meta is trying to invent the future while its entire business model is trapping divorced dads in a 2014 BuzzFeed slideshow. AI compresses time, Meta sells time. Zuck is spending billions teaching the slot machine to think.