‘Sounds like a terrible dystopian future’: Bumble CEO’s prediction about AI dating draws comparisons to ‘Black Mirror’
Who doesn’t love app dating? The swiping left! The swiping right! It’s all the best! Well, according to Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, AI may soon allow app dating to get a lot less swipe-y.
During an interview with Emily Chang of Bloomberg Live, Bumble CEO Herd shared some thoughts on adding AI to dating that has some saying, “No thanks!”
It’s not exactly what you might think, though. Rather than dating actual AI (though that feels around the corner too), Herd merely suggests the latest appeal for tech to prevent humans from ever feeling slightly uncomfortable.
“Our focus with AI is to help create more healthy and equitable relationships. And that also
starts with yourself,” says Herd. “You could in the near future be talking to your AI dating
concierge and you could share your insecurities.” Maybe it’s just my experience, but telling a robot all your insecurities rarely ends well.
She continues: “And it could help you train yourself into a better way of thinking about yourself.
And then it could give you productive tips for communicating with other people.”
However, it doesn’t stop there. Herd describes another step in the process, “There is a world
where your dating concierge could go and date for you with another dating concierge. And then
you don’t have to talk to 600 people. It will scan all of San Francisco for you and say, ‘these are
the three people you really ought to meet.’”
The internet reaction on this one is about what you might expect, with issues ranging from the
moral aspects to the damaging societal ones, along with the inevitable Black Mirror
comparisons:
As several folks point out, what Herd describes not only sounds like a Black Mirror episode, it
literally IS a Black Mirror episode. Season 4’s “Hang the DJ,” to be precise:
If you’ve never seen it, here’s the episode’s synopsis: “Paired up by a dating program that puts an expiration date on all relationships, Frank and Amy soon begin to question the system's logic.”
That being said, if we’ve learned anything in the 2020s, it’s that every episode of Black Mirror is an
accurate prediction.
You can watch the whole interview at this link. (Or just go watch Black Mirror. Same-same.)
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