Why Marissa Mayer’s AI parenting anecdote received such a strong reaction on social media

Many people use AI for routine tasks like drafting emails or answering quick questions. But former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer used it for something that users on social media aren’t necessarily thrilled about. In a New York Times interview published over the weekend, Mayer revealed that when tasked with coming up with three bullet points to summarize what made her 10-year-old daughter special, she asked AI for help. “It came back and was like, your daughter is empathetic, creative, and an animal lover,” Mayer told the New York Times. Mayer served as Yahoo’s CEO from 2012 to 2017 and was Google’s first female engineer. She now runs an AI startup called Dazzle, which launched in September after raising $8 million in seed funding last year. “This is so bleak” To source the bullet points, Mayer used Dazzle AI, an AI personal assistant that relies on one’s camera roll rather than text. While Mayer allegedly found the response perfect, users on social media are thinking otherwise, with most pointing out the bizarre or disappointing nature of offloading human emotions and parenting to an agent. “This is so bleak,” political commentator Keith Edwards wrote on X, in a post with 1.9 million vi…

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