Meta’s AI Spending Starts to Spook Investors

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This episode is sponsored by HPE. Today's networks must evolve from simply providing connectivity to harnessing AI to deliver exceptional connected experiences. At the break, HPE's Rami Rahim shares how self-driving networks can make that happen.

**Isabelle Bousquette** (0:19)
Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Friday, July 31st. I'm Isabelle Bousquette, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute.
Young adults are looking to AI chatbox to help them figure out what to say in social situations. We're diving into why they're doing it and what the risks are. Then, Meta's stock stumbled this week after the company said it anticipated $137 billion in capital spending this year on AI infrastructure. We're looking at how Meta is paying for all of it, and why investors are starting to lose patience.
But first, do you ever get stuck in a conversation and not know what to say? For a growing number of young adults, that's no longer a problem. And it's all thanks to AI 20-somethings are now asking chatbots for advice on what to say to friends, family, even potential romantic partners on dating apps. And while it's helping some ease their social anxiety, psychologists warn it could be damaging to interpersonal relationships, and teaching young people that they can't trust their own judgment. Natalie Kaufman, who reported on this for the Wall Street Journal, spoke to our colleague, Imani Moiz.

**Imani Moise** (1:37)
What was the most surprising or extreme example that you came across of someone outsourcing their social life to AI?

**Natalie Kaufman** (1:43)
Definitely someone who uses AI in real time to help her reply to someone in a tricky or otherwise uncomfortable situation. So if she didn't know the subject of something having to do with politics or a book or article that someone mentioned, she wanted to seem smart and well-read. So she would just ask AI for a quick generated summary of the topic and use that as her little script or note cards to know what to say next.

**Imani Moise** (2:09)
So we know that AI can make mistakes at work. Can it also backfire in social situations?

**Natalie Kaufman** (2:15)
For sure. Someone I spoke with said she was trying to figure out what to say to her friends in person and AI gave her just this terrible response that backfired on her. She says she has lost or at least weakened some of her relationships by trying to outsource her thinking and her emotions to AI because it doesn't come across the way sometimes you think it will, it comes off as kind of robotic and cold. She has done this with dates as well. So before she goes on a date, she'll prepare these quote-unquote note cards as sort of like talking points, and she's gotten to the restaurant or the movie or whatever, and it just doesn't come out the way she anticipated it would, and kind of lands with a thud.

**Imani Moise** (2:54)
You also spoke to someone who was on the receiving end of this, where she was dating someone and then all of a sudden suspected that he was starting to use ChatGPT or some type of AI in all of their communications. How did she know? What was the tell?

**Natalie Kaufman** (3:07)
Yeah, so this was her friend, actually. She was seeing this guy at the time, and his texts were coming across with really poor grammar and spelling and just kind of rambling. And all of a sudden, the texts became really polished and clean. And she said the way that she and her friend knew that these texts were AI generated was that before, he kind of had a hard time figuring out the difference between there, there, and there.

**Imani Moise** (3:32)
And all of a sudden, he's an expert.

**Natalie Kaufman** (3:33)
He's perfect at grammar, yeah.

**Imani Moise** (3:36)
That extreme aside, you spoke with several people who use AI this way. Did any of them tell you they felt more confident over time or more dependent on the technology?

**Natalie Kaufman** (3:45)
So it definitely varies. Some people felt empowered by the AI and had it sort of be a sounding board for them. And others found that they used AI sort of more as a crutch, something where it made them second guess everything unless they put it through AI.

**Imani Moise** (4:00)
What do experts say about that dependence or checking AI a lot?

**Natalie Kaufman** (4:04)
Yeah, a lot of them warn against using it so much to the point where you lose faith in your own voice and your own ability to regulate your emotions. But one friendship and relationship coach I spoke with actually advises her clients on sort of healthy use of AI to not script conversations, but to prepare going in so that you're not as worried. And she mentioned that for the socially anxious, it really helps unlock conversations that they might have otherwise shunned or avoided. She does recommend to limit use for a big event, just the day before is plenty just to get some talking points, and then for recurring events just once a week. But it really just depends on the person and what they're comfortable doing.