Good lord. My first read of this I was convinced it was satire.
> The dating giant says it long term plan is to squeeze artificial intelligence into “literally everything” in its apps.
> The company celebrated its new partnership with a press release written by ChatGPT... It includes quotes supposedly penned by the AI itself, as though it has its own feelings about corporate strategy. “I’m thrilled that Match Group matched with me,” ChatGPT said. “Together, we’re not just breaking the ice; we’re melting it, and reshaping the way work gets done.”
I definitely agree there is a ton of over-hyping going on with AI, but I don't like the idea of lumping it all together with "the blockchain".
Around 2017 I worked for a fintech company who was going to "sprinkle in some blockchain" everywhere, and it was an unmitigated disaster. I kept thinking "Why, again, can't we just use a database for this?" In fairness to our execs, every time we said we'd sprinkle in some blockchain we'd get a higher valuation and more funding from VCs, so there was that incentive...
With AI, while again I feel it's overhyped, I personally get tons of value in my day-to-day work life with ChatGPT, e.g. having it summarize documentation for features I'm not aware of, quickly writing some snippets of code for me, looking up some relevant regulations, etc. (and before the cries of "BUT HALLLLUCINATIONS!!!" - I know, I'm not an idiot, I use ChatGPT for the start of my investigations, not the end).
So I see tons of real value in AI (even if I also see tons of places where that little "magic star" icon is starting to get really annoying) in a way where I never saw commensurate value in blockchain.
It's not just search being broken, it's much of the web being an ad-ridden morass. With a great search engine, I could get directed to a bunch of shitty sites that may or may not have what I'm looking for, if I can find it under the half-dozen overlays for cookies and newsletters. Or I could just use one, simple interface that lets me ask specific follow-up questions that are relevant to my use case. I'll take the risk of hallucinations over one more "Before we show you this recipe, here's the history of food" any day.
ChatGPT is decently good at synthesizing coherent, on-point docs out of the generally messy stuff online. Even when Google was good, it couldn’t do this.
(ChatGPT is merely decently good, not perfect or anywhere near close. But it’s still useful.)
I see the future of chatGPT, “Here’s my take on that topic, also let me show you “this product”(insert link) that will make doing what you want much easier”
That's part of it but I wouldn't overstate that. Even if Google hadn't been enshittified with ads, blogspam and SEO cruft, I'd still prefer ChatGPT for all the same cases I love it for now.
For example, I love how ChatGPT lets me "search" for things when I don't even know the name/keywords of things to search for, but instead I can ask it in natural language for example "I'm trying to generate this kind of view in SQL, how would I do that?" - at the very least ChatGPT will inform me of some json operator or window function I didn't know about, so now at least I'm "grounded" in what to search for. And I think more importantly, even if search did bring back the exact correct webpage in answer to my question, the interactive nature of ChatGPT and the ability to ask it questions specific to my detailed, individual use case are invaluable and just much faster.
Well, although it was stupid, it wasn’t altering the value proposition.
With Tinder, I’m already persuaded I’m paying $30pm to chat with 70% bots, and there are countless memes saying “Say potato” to botgirls who always answer the same scripts;
But Tinder partnering with ChatGPT to fake profiles that increase customer value?
The blockchain merely robbed naive people of their money. Stuffing AI into dating is an even stronger way to commodify people than dating apps themselves were.
Literally the place people go to escape the algorithm and meet real people... And they're so ready to ignore their users' scientifically proven emotional need for in-person connection so they can juice some numbers for a few quarters.
They have a stated long term objective of working AI into everything which is worth discussing, but yeah this is just about code generation and writing emails. It's too bad that this is where journalism is these days.
Is the title here implying users will be chatting with bots run by the companies? Why in the world would they do that?
Clearly the purpose here is to weed out fraud and abuse more easily by analyzing chats between users. I'd welcome it. I'm pretty sure some dating apps already do this, both with text and images, but ChatGPT is probably better at it.
It's one of the purest examples of short term business thinking I can imagine. Will this goose this quarter's revenue? Heck yeah. But there may not be a dating app market at all in three years once the public realizes that "dating apps" are just fancy wrappers around ChatGPT built to "drive engagement" by making damned sure you don't actually ever enter into a long term relationship with an actual human.
It seems dating apps will be leading the way into fulfilling the Dead Internet Theory.
Can't get those sweet, sweet AI stock bumps without a press release.
Anyhow, I expect them to announce something a lot more innocuous but do something a lot less innocuous. It doesn't have to be exactly what I said, which would be pretty blatant, though personally I have absolutely no problem imagining it would happen, but it'll be something that if someone just directly described it to you without sugar coating it you'd find offensive, I guarantee it. The game theory all but guarantees it; if $YOU don't do it, someone else will, so it may as well be $YOU. Basically a tragedy of the commons.
Maybe Tinder and some of its competitors will all self-destruct in that way, or retreat into being a kind of lowbrow spamware network for loners. But if so, there will still be a market demand from people who want to meet other humans to reproduce with, and other companies (both existing and new ones) will create new offerings to serve those people. The idea that ‘game theory guarantees’ that everything just turns to shit (which seems to be your view) is evidently wrong. Parts of the economy sometimes self-destruct in that way, but when they do, they leave fertile ground for new things to emerge.
If 'the public realizes that "dating apps" are just fancy wrappers around ChatGPT built to "drive engagement"', they'll salt the earth for any future dating apps. Fertile ground is not guaranteed.
This distrust is already building around us right now, it's not a theory. I don't live in Silicon Valley and I think that can sometimes help serve as a counterpoint to an excessively SV-view of the world here on HN sometimes. The normies in my life are already talking about this sort of thing, unprompted by me. Dating apps may be the vanguard but there's plenty of things charging behind them.
Game theory does not guarantee that everything turns to shit; that sort of glib summary makes me think you don't know what the tragedy of the commons even is, or the obvious application to a race to the bottom in this particular segment. Again, it's not like it's some brand new hypothesis that dating apps do scummy things to drive engagement; I gave an example. I find people's touching child-like faith that a known-scummy portion of the market won't do some other scummy thing once the opportunity presents itself to be simply incomprehensible. Plenty of people aren't nice, especially people already doing scummy things. Psychopaths are real and do real things to real people in the real world, not some sort of hypothetical construction dreamed up by disconnect ivory tower psychologists as a theoretical test case.
> they'll salt the earth for any future dating apps
Baseless assertion. If people get sick of dating apps because they somehow all end up being full of bots, someone can make a new dating app where the primary selling point is that they prevent or minimise bots, maybe using some kind of human vetting process. Many people would then use that app.
> faith that a known-scummy portion of the market won't do some other scummy thing
I have no such faith. I did acknowledge that parts of the market can degrade, and that you might even be right that bots will ruin most existing dating apps. That could happen. But the idea that this would definitely spell the end of all dating apps is just an assertion you are making with no evidence.
Well, it's pretty widely known that a lot of dating websites are full of third-party bots, trying to get you to follow certain instagram/premium snapchat/onlyfans profiles - and pushing romance scams, financial scams and suchlike.
It's also pretty widely known that a lot of the big dating websites started out with a bunch of first-party fake profiles and activity, because nobody joins a dating website that doesn't have any users. Usually once the site becomes successful though they get rid of the first-party fake activity though.
So first-party bots and bots that are active right now on the major sites are both plausible. Just maybe not first-party bots that are active on the major sites right now.
Not in the dating game, but all I've heard is that it's the company themselves creating a giant fraudulent community of "hot young singles in your area". AI will only make this worse.
While I haven't been in the dating pool for a while, I still get a huge number of dating related ads.
One of the trends that I notice is that there are many more 'AI dating coach' services that seem geared at helping people continue interesting conversations or appear funnier or more intelligent than they are.
I see the appeal, as my wife will be the first to tell you I do not do well over text, but I can't help but see these as totally immoral tools.
I think the end result will be that people will get a sense for when an AI is talking to them, in the same way we have a sense for fake accounts. But as these tools get better, that might not be the case.
Also, I look forward to seeing people on dates that were arranged by their respective agents lol.
If you're a man, you're probably going to want AI to "assist" you with replies to maximize your chances of success with your (relatively few) matches. If you're a woman, you're going to want AI to manage the dozens of conversations in-flight at any given time. We're probably moving toward a world where AIs are flirting with AIs totally open loop.
Do (heterosexual) males really have that bad of a match rate?
Why not treat it like a job hunt or a sales process? Figure out requirements, optimize your profile to attract mates with those requirements?
Sure, “seed” the matches by reaching out to profiles which meet your requirements. Try sending intelligent messages, catchy subject line etc. Stand out. Tighten your efforts to mates you find strong compatibility with.
If you want to see it in action, just create a male profile, post some stock photos and a bio that you think represent a “normal” guy, and start swiping.
If you believe in morals you'd believe so. They're filtering a person's thoughts when dating. Dating itself can be seen as immoral, especially in hookup culture.
If someone feels like they're speaking to grammarly, or a generic response from google they heard before, they revert to judging you by your looks as usual. If you are ugly none of the AI crap will work.
Is it immoral to hire a dating coach to help with your profile?
Or a coach to revise your resume?
I think there’s some balance, but I think the key point is that the person takes responsibility for however they put together messages. Although interestingly, I guess it worked for the other person as they dated for a bit and I think he achieved his goal of dating this person.
If they are literally just having ChatGPT write messages whole cloth then they will suffer detection in person. But I think that’s more stupidity than morality.
I did have a friend mention how she dated someone who was amazing and thoughtful by text but very different in person or on the phone.
If you're ugly you're not getting matches anyway. It does nothing for ugly people. At the end of the day a person has to be attractive to some positive degree in order to find a partner.
It's very non-linear, such that conversation quality doesn't matter much.
A person below the attractiveness threshold gets basically no matches, so no chance to talk. A person above the threshold gets a huge number of "already motivated" matches, so no need for good talk. Conversation quality only matters for the small number of marginal cases (maybe 20% of users)
It's also algorithmically based. My number was likely shadow banned and I got basically no good matches ever. My friend used my number since he ran out and determined it gave him less matches, less quality, and even overseas it was terrible with HIS photos and my number.
The funny characteristic was that the number also matched me with my long term girlfriend and got him a single girl that he was interested in. I generally agree with your assessment, but I'd say out of 20% you still couldn't determine the AI user's intentions.
I've texted for my friends and I could get them a date or hookup but honestly when there's no motivation for them to do it themselves, it's a waste of time, they were not interested except to determine their conversation skills were the issue and not their looks.
I'm looking forward to that: Let's link our ChatGPT chat histories with Tinder, have the LLMs impersonate us, simulate all the pre-date conversations, talk about basics, discuss fundamental life ideas, let them ghost each other etc and find out which conversation in theory survives the longest. With these few people, after receiving a tailored date / relationship / expectations briefing you can then meet up. No more time wasted in endless texting / boring job interview dates in cafes. Texting would only last for coordination.
> The dating giant says it long term plan is to squeeze artificial intelligence into “literally everything” in its apps.
My guess is that this will be disastrous for the platform if it makes it into the actual chat. Profile writing may be useful. I feel like women would feel deeply uncomfortable with enshittified messaging, since they would no longer be able to tell who is genuine and who is a serial killer. The only way it could work is if there was disclosure "Bob is using AI for this conversation", which defeats the reason Bob likely wants to use AI to talk to Alice.
EDIT: I am aware people are already using ChatGPT to message their matches, but I feel like this would pour gasoline on the fire.
IDK, I think it could be disastrous for users attempting to actually meet real humans to establish compatibility and have a relationship with. But there's apparently a bunch of demand for imaginary relationships with bots, and there's seemingly people who enjoy chatting on the dating apps but drag their feet about meeting up IRL. What if the platform "succeeds" by getting subscription fees from people who aren't comfortable saying they don't want a relationship with a real human to endlessly chat with someone who _might_ be real, or could be a bot, or could be a real person sometimes but employing a bot, ...?
The real use case here is for women to use it to triage tens to hundreds of matches, which will lead to normal men becoming frustrated and leaving resulting in the only people left being fuckboys and serial killers. Which is kinda what it looks like now already.
I mean I love to hate anything done by large corps and creepshot cringy VCs, CEOs (nope, not going to name names :P) like the other average peron, but I would take any AI or something else or somebody else that tells me just few things about profiles/matches and I really think those are very reasonable asks:
- do they have a habit of typin lyk dis?
- do they really read?
- do they reply in a timely and proper manner?
- are their pictures really current? (God, this! If only AI solves just this)
Yup. Sue me! But I’ll take that and I think AI can do at least some of these.
Online dating is so fucked up and skewed in different ways to different sides that probably any change might potentially be an improvement. And for a lot of people online dating is literally the only way left when it comes to dating.
when i first read the headline i thought this was a reddit style deal, where chatgpt would be licensing tinder conversation/match data for training. which would be a lot spicier than what it is!
Those are proven ways to build lasting relationships while living a fulfilling life. That's incompatible with dating apps. Tech founders need repeat subscribers. They want to dangle the possibility of love as if it's a jackpot atop the slot machine in the casino. Sometimes someone wins, but the goal is to get as many people as possible to believe that can be them if only they keep spinning the wheel as many times as possible in a gamified caricature of dating.
I can't understand how anyone thinks we're capable of aligning AGI when we can't even align tech founders. Corporations are a proto-AGI, and they're the least aligned entities I can think of.
Divorce rates were skyrocketing before online dating became mainstream, so I'd challenge your statement that meeting IRL "build(s) lasting relationships while living a fulfilling life".
The truth is most people are meeting their spouses in the apps, as painful as it is. Bars are far worse for most people, and many people don't want to get hit on at the gym, while running errands, or at their job.
Not scary but hard when your niches are not exactly the 1%.
I can talk untech and talk tech.
But what the hell am I suppose to do to meet those where I'm a goth who uses FreeBSD, goes for evening strolls picking up litter for enjoyment, cynical enough that wants to see the earth burn while an environmentalist who has a dream of opening an animal sanctuary? Goes to the gym, sword fences and finds most of life bullshit oh and also a sword fencer and fire juggler?
> Not scary but hard when your niches are not exactly the 1%.
I'll be a little blunt. You're not (and almost none us are) as much as a special snowflake as you may believe. Nearly everyone has unique and niche interests.
But more importantly, your post seems to propose the idea that we should all be interested in the same things as our romantic partners. Where does this idea come from? Sure, I think it's important to share some things you like to do together, but I think it's much more important to share the same value system and ideals. Hobbies are just details. I don't care if my partner sword fences or not, but I do care that they can see it's important to me, and cares enough about my happiness to know that I should seek out and do the things I love.
I'm not wanting nor advertising nor where everything much match 100% in common. That would be silly.
I was just making a figure of speech that my interests, are those which are not topic of conversation that you would have at a bar or tavern nor really any other place were you would socialise to court.
If the other party cannot resonate with the other persons hobbies or interests than as much care and love you give, it won't last; I'm just happy with fun and personality if I were to scrap all above.
But I still hold belief that of if there are not mutual interests between one and another then the relationship cant grow.
I don't disagree.
Love and Care are ever so important; they are the basics to form the spark, to light the candle, however.
The other party are too needing to be ready to engage in the passions you enjoy and that to share my passions I would need to take interest in vice versa. Incompatibilities are true and its not a percentage.
Would you be ready to play with fire? Go out on cold wet rainy night with a litter picker and carry a dripping wet trash bag ring? Listen to me ramble on how I've configured vtnet jails which allows me to host jailed bhyve VMs?
Because for me, the personality type I am is someone who would like to do them with me. The same goes for me if I was to be in a relationship I would like to do what you would want to do too. Compiling kernels till 2am and then going litter picking is my idea of fun. If not dorky.
Not everything is going to gel but the comprise is to find an equal balance you both enjoy. That however only comes from an established relationship, which is hard when you don't connect and they don't give you the benefit of the doubt.
My gripe is that when it comes to IT unless your kitted in the IT world its boring as * to anyone else. Goth is a niche outlet, stomping boots and wearing black isn't everyones taste and fire spinning is out there but fencing is an commitment.
I don't hold the "woe is me, single forever" maturity. Life is too short for that. It will either will, or it won't. It's hard and depressing at times but hey, I'm proud of what I have interests in.
reminds me of the igotstandardsbro site about finding dudes of a certain income level, body mass, and height. the point of the site is that when you put your preferences in it's like 0.9% of the population.
in that vein, what you're looking for is like 0.1%, and they may already be married. you're better off learning how to relate to the normies than holding out hope for any of that.
Why do you expect people who you meet, who you are not in a relationship with, to share your interests? You don't need to share interests to talk about them, as you already pointed out. I remain confused by you and your alleged problem.
Then the AI says, we've figured out with 98% certainty that you're going to be alone for the rest of your life. Would you like to learn more about MAID?
> Women have far too many choices and men have none.
So many of my girlfriends are single... this is not how I would phrase the issue. By and large, men are looking to get laid, women are looking to get serious. If a woman only wants to get laid, sure, the world is her oyster as long as she's young and conventionally attractive. If a man wants to get serious... he's gotta differentiate himself against the hordes of guys out there who just wanna get laid (many of whom present themselves as serious).
I've been doing this online dating thing since... well, I met my first romantic partner on a BBS. It seems to me that what men and women want has significantly diverged over time. So when you conclude,
> Women need AI to show them who they would best get along with. Men need AI to get women to talk to them.
I gotta say, nah. We don't "need" those things. Technology is not bringing us closer; I think that it is significantly responsible for this divergence. What we need to do, I believe, is return to meatspace.
Way to miss my point and tell me about my problems...
I'm tellin ya, meatspace also has thousands of dudes, their number isn't the problem. It's the underlying premise, that we should rely on technology for matchmaking and socialization in general. If we go with your approach, prompt engineers will float to the surface. Which probably sounds great to so many dudes here, but it still ain't what most women want.
I think Benjamin Chiang and his very new startup Volar are kind of trying to accomplish something along the lines of what you're describing. I think the way it works is you have a conversation with a chatbot about many topics. That generates a sort of "AI representation" of yourself. Then, that "AI representation" has conversations with "AI representations" of other people. If it finds people who it thinks are compatible, a transcript of that "conversation" is sent to both parties for review and then they can decide to interact for real if they want.
That is the destructive power of dating apps. They present you with the illusion of unlimited choice. Why swipe right on this person, when there's surely someone better just a few later. The apps have distilled dating - finding a partner or just getting laid - to a decision made in seconds with generally only a photo and a few catch words.
The apps have done to dating what social media has done to attention spans.
> The dating giant says it long term plan is to squeeze artificial intelligence into “literally everything” in its apps.
> The company celebrated its new partnership with a press release written by ChatGPT... It includes quotes supposedly penned by the AI itself, as though it has its own feelings about corporate strategy. “I’m thrilled that Match Group matched with me,” ChatGPT said. “Together, we’re not just breaking the ice; we’re melting it, and reshaping the way work gets done.”