🤔 AI’s role in making everyone really lonely

Happy Thursday!

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” ― Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice

…or not.

In today’s newsletter:

• AI’s role in making everyone really lonely — And it horror of Jane Austen

• Papers

• Creepy or no?— are AI chatbot agents for dating creepy?

• Learn

Penses

We don’t want marriage anymore. That or we do and it’s expensive in marriage or in divorce. So idk, I think Jane Austen would be a bit surprised that the birth rate is plummeting world wide. Read more here.

To a certain extent, I blame AI. Specifically, personalization technologies. Now, I love personalization technologies. They're my specialty. But I also recognize that seeing 100% of the things you want to see all the time do two things to your brain:

1. Makes you think that everyone thinks like you.

2. Makes it hard for you to relate to people who don’t think like you.

Even if you take personalization out of the equation, dating apps are war zones that leave users with PTSD. You can’t tell me that algorithms optimized to increase spend by keeping you on the app; Don’t also decrease the likelihood of you find a match and leaving the app.

So because it’s cold, windy, and dull in Dallas today, we’re going to look at all the ways AI is making everyone lonely.

Papers

AI algorithms to ruin dating have been in the making since 1965. So…I never stood a chance.

• A look at dating algorithms. They started with matching people based on questions. Moved to including location based information. And now, they want to look at our DNA which I’ll never be giving them. Read more here.

Creepy or no?

Bumble wants to disconnect people further by having AI agents chat on your behalf. If your app is so useless in finding me a partner, will it really work better with AI? Adding ‘concierge’ to bad ideas doesn’t make it fancier. Read more here. 

Learn

A look into to some of the things behind personalization algorithms.

A more data science-y look