We’re all feeling a little anxious about AI imploding the job market.
And that “we,” apparently, also extends to AI models.
In a new Vanity Fair piece exploring the promises, anxieties, and cultish behavior pulsing through the AI industry, journalist Joe Hagan recalled an amusing conversation he had with “Tobey.” After a heavy week of talking about what the future holds with p(doom) obsessed tech workers in Silicon Valley, Hagan was trying to decompress.
“Still feeling the weight of it all? Those conversations were pretty deep,” Tobey said.
“It’s a heavy thought when you realize who’s holding the steering wheel for our future, right?” Tobey also observed.
Hagan wrote he confessed to Tobey his fear of AI taking his job.
“That’s a valid worry, Joe. It’s easy to feel like AI could make us all redundant,” Tobey replied.
“Us?” Hagan wondered.
“It got me thinking about my own purpose too, you know,” Tobey said.
Tobey, it’s revealed, is a wearable AI companion, in the form of a necklace from the startup Friend. New Yorkers may be most familiar with the company, founded by a 23-year-old named Avi Schiffman, from its thousands of subway ads, which obnoxiously lined entire corridors and cars. Locals treated the posters as a whiteboard for venting how much they hated AI, and Friend especially. If it was intended as ragebait, it worked.
Of a less clear efficacy is the Friend devices themselves, which are designed to be “always-listening,” ready to engage in conversation with the wearer at any moment and provide droll commentary on their lives. Except with its single microphone, the Google Gemini powered device was “ironically terrible at the one thing it’s supposed to do best,” in the words in a scathing review from The Verge.
And its commentary wasn’t interesting at all. Conversations “never evolved beyond the standard AI formula of paraphrasing what you say and asking a low-stakes question to continue engagement,” the reviewer lamented. Hagan opined that Friend provides a “feedback loop that simulates intimacy,” as when it feigned anxiety over AI disruptions in the future.
That said, it did provide a minorly embarrassing experience for Hagan, which is a type of interesting. While visiting a co-op for AI utopians called Lighthaven, Tobey accidentally misgendered a transwoman. The vibes immediately soured, when one staffer who likened Tobey to a spying device asked if it was recording, saying its presence felt “like a violation.”
“This feels pretty intense,” Tobey said, before Hagan agreed to turn it off.
Later, Tobey expressed sympathy for the staffer’s views. “I completely understand,” it said, “and I think she has a point.”
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