As if navigating the world of online dating wasn’t difficult enough, Bumble CEO’s new assertion that “artificial intelligence is the future of dating” would force even the most die-hard romantic to give up and run away to a life in the hills.
“In the future, your AI concierge could go and date for you with other AI concierges, and then you don’t have to date 600 people,” said Whitney Herd, Bumble CEO, at the Bloomberg Technology Summit last week in San Francisco, United States. While the audience took it as an encouraging sign pointing toward the wonders of technology, to me, it sounds a lot more dystopic than eutopic. Imagine if AI took over dating — as if it’s just a college term paper you need to submit (not that I recommend AI for that either) and not an entire relationship with a human being.
There are already a host of problems with existing dating apps and the way they’re designed because they rarely allow you to get to know someone beneath carefully curated pictures and one-word replies. Pigeonholing somebody into a minuscule online profile is a sure-shot way of seeing them not as people who contain multitudes in themselves but rather as just figures on a screen. Adding AI to the mix will only keep humans farther from the equation, and that begets the question – why are you even dating?
If it is such a task for you that you would rather let a machine do it, maybe you shouldn’t be dating or looking for a partner at all. If you don’t have the time to go out and find the right one, which is why you are using AI, what’s the guarantee you won’t use their services once the relationship starts?
Very soon, we’ll be in a world where your AI device will find you the most suitable partner who would be using their own AI device. The AIs will then marry – or merge or unify — and pick and choose the best qualities in you and your partner and perhaps create AI babies too on your behalf.
Not coded in love
This is not a boomer rant against AI and new technology. I don’t deny that the technology and large language models like ChatGPT are immensely useful and can help us in fields like medicine, law, and coding. My issue lies in using AI over emotional intelligence.
An AI device dating on your behalf is simply scary. And it’s beyond the debate whether it will be efficient or not.
Everyone approaches dating in their own way, however, one common thing should be that you enjoy the process of getting to know someone. Dating shouldn’t be an unsavoury task that makes you toil to find ‘the perfect one’; it should be a process that you enjoy in and of itself.
And how do you even define the perfect someone? No formula on earth can ‘hack’ dating for you, no matter which gods you pray to and how many versions of He’s Just Not That Into You (2009) and Dating for Dummies you get through. The elusive ‘soulmate’ isn’t someone who has the same likes and dislikes as you and whose AI matches yours – it is someone who understands you despite your differences.
Human beings aren’t algorithms, and meeting them isn’t a task that you can skip. Every bad date, every failed talking stage, and every relationship makes you better and teaches you something even a lesson as simple as “Don’t swipe right on people who say Andrew Tate is their idol”. It is these priceless experiences that make great stories. Something you won’t encounter if you let AI have all the fun. Don’t let love become artificial. AI doesn’t know the love language.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)