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Bumble's Dating 'AI Concierge' Will Date Hundreds of Other People's 'Concierges' For You (fortune.com) 63

Posted by BeauHD from the we're-living-in-a-Black-Mirror-episode dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Imagine this: you've "dated" 600 people in San Fransisco without having typed a word to any of them. Instead, a busy little bot has completed the mindless 'getting-to-know-you' chatter on your behalf, and has told you which people you should actually get off the couch to meet. That's the future of dating, according to Whitney Wolfe Herd -- and she'd know. Wolfe Herd is the founder and executive chair of Bumble, a meeting and networking platform that prompted women to make the first move. While the platform has now changed this aspect of its algorithm, Wolfe Herd said the company would always keep its "North Star" in mind: "A safer, kinder digital platform for more healthy and more equitable relationships. "Always putting women in the driver's seat -- not to put men down -- but to actually recalibrate the way we all treat each other."

Like any platform, Bumble is now navigating itself in a world of AI -- which means rethinking how humans will interact with each other in an increasing age of chatbots. Wolfe Herd toldBloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco this week it could streamline the matching process. "If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your [AI] dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierge," she told host Emily Chang. "Truly. And then you don't have to talk to 600 people. It will scan all of San Fransisco for you and say: 'These are the three people you really outta meet.'" And forget catch-ups with friends, swapping notes on your love life -- AI can be that metaphorical shoulder to cry on.

Artificial intelligence -- which has seen massive amounts of investment since OpenAI disrupted the market with its ChatGPT large language model -- can help coach individuals on how to date and present themselves in the best light to potential partners. "So, for example, you could in the near future be talking to your AI dating concierge and you could share your insecurities,"Wolfe Herd explained. "'I've just come out of a break-up, I've got commitment issues,' and it could help you train yourself into a better way of thinking about yourself." "Then it could give you productive tips for communicating with other people," she added. If these features do indeed come to Bumble in the future, they will impact the experience of millions.
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Bumble's Dating 'AI Concierge' Will Date Hundreds of Other People's 'Concierges' For You More

Bumble's Dating 'AI Concierge' Will Date Hundreds of Other People's 'Concierges' For You

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  • Sounds awful and stupid (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @05:05PM (#64463651)

    Unless it's HEAVILY trained to the individual (and who is going to sit down and train an AI to emulate their small talk?), this is essentially a pairing of random number generators and claiming success when they agree.

    Realistically, you want to have an idea of what the person looks like, what they sound like, if they have compatible culture and values, and if they have a reciprocal interest to you. Unless you're young enough and stupid enough, in which case you only care about the first item.

    Swiping left or right on an app is probably the most efficient first filter. As someone who isn't a '10' I think that's sad, but it's also reality. Get past that filter and you can move on to the other things. In person. There's no way around that if you want something more than a quick appearance-based sexual encounter.

    • Re:Sounds awful and stupid (Score:5, Funny)

      by Local ID10T ( 790134 ) <ID10T.L.USER@gmail.com> on Friday May 10, 2024 @05:16PM (#64463669) Homepage

      Sounds like a gay bath house...

      Imagine this: you've "dated" 600 people in San Francisco without having typed a word to any of them.

    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      "Hang the DJ" is the fourth episode of the fourth series of the British anthology series Black Mirror. ... According to the executive producer Annabel Jones, "Hang the DJ" reflects on the state of dating in the present day and a "general sense of loneliness". The episode originated from series creator and episode writer Charlie Brooker, who conceived of the Coach dating application by analogy with the audio streaming platform Spotify: it determines a "playlist" of relationsh

    • Re:Sounds awful and stupid (Score:5, Interesting)

      by silvergig ( 7651900 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @09:18PM (#64464079)
      I stopped with OLD a long time ago, it was just too painful, mostly because of the zero effort being put into womens' profiles. I am sure men can be the same, but we are inundated every day with stories of how much work it takes to train AI. A lot of women can't even be bothered to clean their bathroom mirror before taking a selfie wearing a stained shirt in a messy apartment. She's not going to spend even 10 seconds doing more than that.

      The problem with OLD is that is sucks, and the people there suck. You have grand delusions on one side, and a lot of emotionally injured and not-single people on the other side. That is not going to be fixed with AI. But Bumble was always a dumpster fire anyway. Their business is keeping you (the men, the people paying), forever single. If you care about yourself in any way, leave Bumble behind.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        A lot of women can't even be bothered to clean their bathroom mirror before taking a selfie wearing a stained shirt in a messy apartment. She's not going to spend even 10 seconds doing more than that.

        I am single and have previously used some OLD sites including this one. I had a different perspective on such profiles: at least such people present themselves honestly and don't pretend to be something they're not, for you to find out later.

        But all in all, I've come to prefer being single to OLDing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        I stopped with OLD a long time ago, it was just too painful, mostly because of the zero effort being put into womens' profiles. I am sure men can be the same, but we are inundated every day with stories of how much work it takes to train AI. A lot of women can't even be bothered to clean their bathroom mirror before taking a selfie wearing a stained shirt in a messy apartment. She's not going to spend even 10 seconds doing more than that.

        The problem with OLD is that is sucks, and the people there suck. You have grand delusions on one side, and a lot of emotionally injured and not-single people on the other side. That is not going to be fixed with AI. But Bumble was always a dumpster fire anyway. Their business is keeping you (the men, the people paying), forever single. If you care about yourself in any way, leave Bumble behind.

        Online Dating is a subscription model, if it worked you'd have people cancelling their subscriptions. So the owners have a vested interest in people not forming lasting relationships.

    • Many industries, businesses, colleges, web sites, media platforms, apps were build on the continual consumption growth and spending growth of the millennial generation. Bumble and a bunch of clickbait 'news' web site deaths are examples.

      Now that the youngest Millennials (born 1996) have fully formed 28 year old brains, the businesses that catered to them being lifelong teenagers and early 20 somethings are starting to retrench and fail.

      OLD now for the mass wave of Millennials has one gender mainly looking

    • "Have your chatbot talk to my chatbot." "Only a good dater with a chatbot can stop a bad dater with a chatbot"

      Seems stupid and sad, but it does have some potential. And AI could glance through your chat logs and social media and forum posts, and get a good idea of who you portray yourself as being. In theory your AI could then match you with others without necessarily publishing this data (just kidding, it will get stolen via fake profiles).

    • In person. There's no way around that if you want something more than a quick appearance-based sexual encounter.

      You can have sexual encounters without the person? Explain how you manage that.

    • who is going to sit down and train an AI to emulate their small talk

      Lonely introverts who treat an AI as if it were a friend.

  • "And she'd know"... why, exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @05:06PM (#64463653)

    She runs a subscription-based dating website, so that makes her an expert on the future of dating? No, all she's knowledgeable about is what new features her business is trying to sell to its customers.

    • Re:"And she'd know"... why, exactly? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @05:14PM (#64463665)

      The trick to a successful dating website is to be very bad at it.

      A good dating site sets you up, you find a partner, and you never come back. A bad dating site sets up again and again and keeps you on the hook hoping the next time will be 'the one'.

      Which option looks more profitable to you?

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @05:40PM (#64463729)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Because the ads advertise finding true love. Sure they have the other features, that is free money, but that isn't what is driving business. Failing at setting up monogomous relationships is.

  • I need more (Score:5, Insightful)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @05:14PM (#64463667)
    I need my "AI concierge" to start making out with other AI. They need to bang, and have AI children. Then they can take over my job, my grocery shopping, replacing my lightbulbs. Finally it can take over snarky commenting on news stories like this.
  • "Always putting women in the driver's seat" is great until a large number of men simply up and leave. Sexbots are getting fairly advanced and the more AI the integrate along with fast paced robotics advancements will mean a there is another option. Sure, it's going to be resisted. I remember someone wanted to open a robot brothel in Houston and the city or some bureaucrats shut them down. That won't be the case everywhere and certainly not in private homes. We already know what dating sites are like when it's 10:1 men to women. Let's see how the shoe fits if it's 10:1 women to men.

    • Re:Just wait until Sexbots get a tiny more advance (Score:4, Informative)

      by Seven Spirals ( 4924941 ) on Friday May 10, 2024 @05:29PM (#64463695)
      Here [khou.com] is that story about the brothel in Houston. Yahoo [yahoo.com] thinks they aren't ethical. Buzzfeed is also sounding pretty butthurt [buzzfeednews.com] saying "The idea of sex machines as technological comeuppance for women who dared declare their liberation has grown alongside the boom in misogynist online media." Of course, the BBC wants to ban [bbc.com] them along with Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]. Even some right wingers [thefederalist.com] are warning they'll destroy the family, etc....

      It all sounds a bit creepy to me, but maybe my white privilege is preventing me from seeing the merit. It's one hell of a good troll, though. Watching people lose their minds about it on both ends of the spectrum is hilarious.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I'm not saying I know what will happen either way. I am amused at the reactions of the various partisans, though. I'm not worried about my own prospects. :-)

      • There are already people in "relationships" with dating sim characters and body pillows.

    • It's pretty great for the one guy.

  • Back to Old Timey Matchmakers, only using AI to pick matches for us. All because we're too lazy to have human interactions ourselves.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MpVpRb ( 1423381 )

      Lazy has nothing to do with it
      Searching through thousands or millions of potential people is impractical to do ourselves

    • All because we're too lazy to have human interactions ourselves.

      It is nothing to do with laziness, it is about opportunities. I never had any opportunities to have "human interactions" with members of the opposite sex other than through dating services of one kind or another. Maybe it was different for you, being invited to parties, having introductions made to you, friends "fixing you up" with potential partners - good for you, but not everyone has that luck.

  • ...that this might be really good once it is perfected
    I train an AI to interact exactly like me
    It interacts with other very well trained AIs, and finds the ones that seem reasonable
    Of course, some sort of quality control would need to be implemented to ensure the AI was trained accurately
    I suspect that the AI in the article would suck mightily
    The worst part about today's AIs is that they are being deployed way before they are ready

  • Maybe this thing can raise your kids too?

  • the birth rate is down.

    • the birth rate is down.

      That's one good thing about it then. It needs to come down.

      • On what basis?

        • The world is running out of resources. As population increases there is less living space per person, less land for agriculture as it gets built on, raw materials like copper are being used up and replaced by inferior substitutes (while they last), less recreational areas remain, more pollution despite expensive measures to mitigate it, inferior foods because not enough good stuff to go round, prices rise with more people "bidding" for remaining resources. I could go on.

          World population has doubled in l

  • Bumble is part of a wave of lazy swipe apps which gained prominence because people couldn't be bothered to fill out profiles. If people can't be bothered to fill out enough detail for humans to figure them out, how are they going to train AI with "Can't see likes. Send a message." Are they going to stalk your social media? Huge privacy issue there.

  • You just reinvented eHarmony.

  • Imagine this: you've "dated" 600 people in San Fransisco without having typed a word to any of them.

    No words, images, or concepts have ever made me feel happier to have never been on a dating site/app/whatever than this lede.

  • The human mind has degenerated into a cesspool.

  • "... the way we all treat each other."

    Meaning: We haven't determined a way to further monetize your loneliness.

    ... more equitable relationships ...

    Now, no-one will see my dick-pics. On the plus side, I won't have swipe through a thousand women thinking they'll marry a Ryan Gosling look-alike.

  • I'm of two minds about this. Part of me wants to say that anyone who is dating online deserves everything they get but the other part of me recognizes that no single people leave their homes except to go on online dates, so there's no winning

  • April 1st was more than a month ago.

  • So the bot does the work and you turn up to the date, shorter than six foot and not blessed in the looks department... and your date goes off with the attractive waiter!
  • Remember that "A safer, kinder digital platform for more healthy and more equitable relationships. "Always putting women in the driver's seat -- not to put men down -- but to actually recalibrate the way we all treat each other." is being said by a tech bro. Nuff said.
  • This has nothing to do with dating. It's about making money off of people's delusions. There's an endless supply of those, so it should be profitable, even if it's done badly. There is a cohort that will try or use anything new... and there is always a company to meet that need.
    PT Barnum? There's a sucker born every second? I can't recall the exact wording... every minute.
    People always want what they want and will always chase it, no matter how unrealistic.

  • Is it no longer practical to get setup on a date by a friend or meet someone's sister at a wedding, or share a workstation with someone in a pottery class, or any of these other old-fashioned methods? When did dating become so complicated, and computer controlled? I don't want to be part of an algorithm. Its demeaning.

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