Mark Zuckerberg may let you speak to dead people with baffling new technology

The creator of Facebook and now CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, has sat down for a remote interview with Lex Fridman on the Lex Fridman podcast.

The first-of-its-kind podcast was conducted in the Metaverse, where both Zuckerberg and Fridman assumed photorealistic avatars that are spawned into a virtual world where they can seamlessly communicate. Notably, both Fridman and Zuckerberg undertook a complex computer scan of their face to create what Zuckerberg calls a codec, which contains a virtual photorealistic avatar.

Fridman and Zuckerberg discuss the nature of reality and how this technology could impact the future of remote communication. Fridman says that one of the first things that come to mind when using this technology is being able to communicate with loved ones, and the next thing is being able to talk to loved ones "that are no longer here".

Zuckerberg recognizes that with this technology combined with possibly an AI-curated to a loved one's responses, there could be extreme benefits for allowing a grieving individual to interact with a virtual version of someone who has passed away.

However, Zuckerberg notes there is an extent to this interaction that could become unhealthy and that he isn't an expert in the psychology surrounding this, so Meta would have to perform studies to understand it in more detail.

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