AI is back in the news cycle baby. What amazing new feature have we unlocked this time? Well, there’s still more work to be done, but business executives are hard at work pushing the limits of just how dehumanizing we can make this technology while refusing to implement it in situations that could benefit humanity by alleviating us from simple tasks devoid of creativity. So what are some executives saying we could replace next with AI? The tedious task of… dating itself.
In a recent interview the CEO of Bumble, Whitney Herd, explored the possible integration of AI in matchmaking. Bumble is a popular dating app with a focus on pushing women to message first and choosing which potential partners to contact, but recently Herd has been wondering about pushing AI to make that first contact instead. She said she imagines a world where users can allow an AI to scan their profile and messages to create a speech pattern based on you. Then it could go and analyze a bunch of potential matches and chat for you to eliminate the famous “getting to know someone” small talk. Depending on how well the chat went, the AI would then report back which matches you should meet up with. In other words, she has literally reimagined the episode of Black Mirror that selects pairings based on how well two AI versions of peoples’ profiles interact in a simulated world.
Y'all I think the show was supposed to warn us of overacceptance of technology, not be a blueprint.
This sounds like a horrendous utilization of AI to me. Sure online dating is a tedious and draining task. I should know, I’ve tried it multiple times and everytime I quit after about a week. But I don’t think replacing everyone’s interactions with AIs talking to each other is really a step forward in the dating game. People are becoming disconnected enough as it is, taking away another form of human interaction hardly seems to be a move that will result in love blooming with any greater efficiency. Plus the amount of personal data required to accurately create an AI based on a person seems like way too much to surrender over to one of these dating companies on a whim. Perhaps several years in the future we could see a dating landscape heavily influenced by AI analysis that allows for compatible people to find each other without difficulty, but I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that point.
Nothing stays the same forever so I don’t doubt that the way we date will change. I simply hope that change is an evolution fueled by greater matching prowess rather than substituting human chats for AI-generated conversations that ends up feeling like devolution. Have you heard about dating apps trying to integrate AI? Would you want to create an AI of yourself to message people and have it suggest who you should date? Will this idea be way more accepted down the road, or remain something of science fiction for many decades still? Make a detailed profile, let a program scan it top to bottom, and have it spit game on your behalf in the comments below!
