Why do millennials love AI so much?

And Gen Z and Gen X, not so much.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

Mark Zuckerberg come on ICYMI…you’d be an iconic guest. —Kate

---

On Saturday’s episode of ICYMI, we took a trip across the pond to check in on Tattle, the controversial influencer snark forum that’s even made its way into parliament.

---

Once again, AI made headlines last week as some kind of “solution” to the loneliness crisis. Ten months after web developer Avi Schiffmann released the poorly-received AI wearable “Friend,” Mark Zuckerberg went on Dwarkesh Patel’s podcast to hint that Meta’s AI efforts, including their new Meta AI app, could also meet the needs of millions of lonely Americans. There’s plenty of good writing about how stupid this is, but the routine backlash to AI announcements doesn’t negate the fact that, clearly, people are using it. Tech founders may not appear very life-like, but they are sometimes effective businessmen, and they wouldn’t invest so much in something like AI if they didn’t see an upside (or, at least a solution to a problem—in Facebook’s case, a global userbase that needs to be entertained but, as Ryan Broderick notes, no longer engages in any kind of dialogue) .

I originally started writing this essay assuming it would be about my “technology tap-out point.” Just like with TV and movies and music, I believe there comes a point in everyone’s relationship with internet culture when they put their hands up and say, “I think I’m just too old for this.” I never want to scold younger people for interacting differently with something than I do, and so perhaps AI is simply where I leave them. The idea of spending time with a chatbot instead of putting in the work to reap the rewards of real friendship sounds unbelievably depressing to me, but that’s also what my parents thought about me playing computer games inside on summer break, which was obviously amazing.

I went looking for numbers to confirm that while I had no interest in AI, Gen Z and the emerging Gen Alpha were the cohort fueling the technology’s apparent success. But I discovered that it’s not lonely Gen Zers who are championing AI use. It’s burned-out millennials.