[downandout]

Clearly there are some humans behind M that are doing things that Facebook would rather entrust to humans (like making phone calls). However, the phone call only proves that this specific aspect of M is human.

In the end, though, I suppose it doesn't matter. I'm going to guess that the ultimate end-game on M is for Facebook to collect advertising/affiliate revenue from recommending things. For example, if someone asks for a Chinese restaurant, plumber, dentist, lawyer, etc. in their city, the one they suggest could be the one that paid Facebook for it. As long as these types of fees make it profitable for Facebook, it doesn't matter if the service needs to be powered by millions of humans. In fact, that would be great - it would mean millions of new jobs.

Larry Page famously told an early investor that Google wasn't yet sure how it would make money, but that search was the only situation in which people would tell a computer what they wanted, and that there had to be a way to make money from that. M is exactly the same - a way to get people to tell Facebook what they want, and it puts them in a great position to monetize it.

[kayoone]

Basically what GoButler or Magic are already doing, just AI based. But this is the goal for all similar services, otherwise it will not scale.