Someone Please Make a Good AI Matchmaker
The following is the transcript of my closing editorial from episode 132 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast
Dating apps suck. We all know it. Part of the reason is the financial incentives aren’t there. It’s hard to get people to pay $10/month if you find them the perfect relationship immediately and they delete the app. This is less of a problem with nonmonogamous people, but eventually if you’re drowning in interest, you don’t need to app anymore. To align the incentives, premium subscriptions should be a one-time fee for unlimited use. Then it’s in the app creator’s best interest to get you to delete it ASAP.
The other reason dating apps suck is that compatibility is hard. Nobody really knows what makes people compatible with each other, so dating apps mostly just default to the superficial. AI, however, could change all this. Imagine an AI matchmaker who has an in depth discussion with you about your personality, what you’re looking for in a partner, your future plans, and all of that. It can ask awkward stuff like income, height, weight, and emotional issues, and people can be honest because it won’t be shared with anyone. Then it scans all your DM’s, email, social media, and everything else you’ve written, and builds a comprehensive profile of you.
Then it starts matching people up. At first, the matches won’t be very good, but still probably better than most apps. The AI doesn’t know yet what makes people compatible. But then people start giving feedback. Every time it matches you with someone, it follows up and asks if you went on a date, how it went, what was your opinion of them, etc. Over time, it learns what qualities go together. It builds a complicated algorithm predicting who will like whom. Eventually, it gets really good at it, and the discovery problem is mostly solved. It can just tell you who you’ll get along best with. It will never be perfect, but it will be better than anything we’ve ever had.
So eventually, it will be really good at matching people, but what about the people who still struggle to get matches? That’s where it gets even better! If it can’t match you up with anyone, it can give you advice! It can tell you exactly what’s holding you back and what qualities you can develop to improve your social life. It can be like “you know if you raised this quality from a 4 to a 7, I’d have a whole bunch of matches for you.” It would be the best dating advice on Earth because it would be completely individualized and data-driven.
We could do this easily with current-gen technology. Somebody just needs to step up and do it. I know we have app developers who listen to us, and I give you my full authorization to steal this idea. Please steal this idea! The only condition is you have to let nonmonogamous people use it too. I promise, the AI can handle it. So get to it already! And remember to buy a few Mind Killer subscriptions with the billion dollars you make.