Tinder Wants AI To Set You Up On a Date (bbc.com)

Dave Lee, writing for BBC: Tinder is growing up. It's now a serious technology company tackling one of life's most important matters, and is by far the most popular dating app worldwide. After a lot of boardroom musical chairs, Mr Rad is the chairman of both Tinder and Swipe Ventures, the arm of the company designed to buy other dating-related technologies. One of which is artificial intelligence. And its collision with dating might be the most intriguing application of AI yet. "I think this might sound crazy," Mr Rad said on Tuesday at tech conference Start-Up Grind. "In five years time, Tinder might be so good, you might be like "Hey [Apple voice assistant] Siri, what's happening tonight?' "And Tinder might pop up and say 'There's someone down the street you might be attracted to. She's also attracted to you. She's free tomorrow night. We know you both like the same band, and it's playing -- would you like us to buy you tickets?'... and you have a match. "It's a little scary."

Comments

Grinder

[Big Hairy Ian]

I think grinder knows where you can stick your AI

No shit?

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Let me make sure I got this right....a dating app wants to set me up on a date?

Wow, talk about finding novel uses unrelated to the original functionality, what motherfucking super genius came up with this brain-busting idea of using a DATING APP to set people up with DATES?

What's next, using a washing machine to clean your clothes?

spam article - get this ad off slashdot

[iggymanz]

could we please not have slashdot articles that are merely ads for crap products?

Dating culture needs to change first

[Baron_Yam]

People are the problem, not the match-making system.

So long as people are willing to lie and manipulate to get laid or married, so long as they have unrealistic expectations and get vindictive when they're not met, there won't be an AI-managed dating app that will handle matchmaking well.

Anyway, the only matchmaking test you need is "do you find this person who is within a reasonable distance at least marginally attractive and have a shared activity you'd participate in together at least once?". The rest is bullshit.

Re:Dating culture needs to change first

[kiviQr]

Oh there will be, combine it with a google translate with English-Female to English-Male translation then add google glasses to adjust reality a bit and we will live in a perfect harmony.

Re:Dating culture needs to change first

[Ol Olsoc]

Where some women believe you talking to her is harassment if she isn't interested.

Maybe you should take the hint. I find it annoying when someone talks to me when I'm clearly not interested, but maybe I'm unusual.

Actually, my reference was to the act of talking to the woman ever, at all. I saw a Q and A session where a group of women were asked if talking to a woman was sexual harassment if she wasn't interested - Most said yes. Because the simple act of talking to a woman is not saying you want to screw her, and women have been taught that any male who isn't gay wants to screw her. Sad when they look at the world obsessed with the thought that everyone wants to screw them. And you needn't worry, unless I have been properly introduced, I will not speak to a woman at all. Even then, it is to say "hello" and no more. I wonder if ignoring women is a form of sexual harassment?

Re:Dating culture needs to change first

[Rastl]

Actually, my reference was to the act of talking to the woman ever, at all. I saw a Q and A session where a group of women were asked if talking to a woman was sexual harassment if she wasn't interested - Most said yes. Because the simple act of talking to a woman is not saying you want to screw her, and women have been taught that any male who isn't gay wants to screw her. Sad when they look at the world obsessed with the thought that everyone wants to screw them. And you needn't worry, unless I have been properly introduced, I will not speak to a woman at all. Even then, it is to say "hello" and no more. I wonder if ignoring women is a form of sexual harassment?

I also find this .. sad. As a woman if someone is talking to me and I'm not interested it's not harassment. It may be annoying but it's not sexual unless the person escalates it beyond expressing interest and won't take no for an answer.

I talk to all kinds of men. I have no idea if any of them want to 'screw me' nor do I care. I've had men compliment me on my clothing, my hair, etc. and I've taken it as a simple compliment and nothing more.

As for Tinder it sounds like they're creating algorithms that match on some key values and spit back results when they're found. Nothing new to see, move along. What direction of swipe would that be?

Re:Dating culture needs to change first

[Ol Olsoc]

I also find this .. sad. As a woman if someone is talking to me and I'm not interested it's not harassment. It may be annoying but it's not sexual unless the person escalates it beyond expressing interest and won't take no for an answer.

I talk to all kinds of men. I have no idea if any of them want to 'screw me' nor do I care. I've had men compliment me on my clothing, my hair, etc. and I've taken it as a simple compliment and nothing more.

And most women don't really care. Before around 2000, I would chat it up with anyone, male or female. And solely for the interaction. But for some reason, we have decided to listen to those who are trying to scrub normal male-female interactions off the face of the earth. There are some who think that this might have some relationship with the falling marriage rate. I don't know that there is only one causative factor, but many men have chosen to pursue other things like career and recreational activities and their bank account.

If I were a woman, I would be pretty pissed at the third wave feminists for damaging my life.

Re:Read between the lines

[XxtraLarGe]

Until we develop an AI that can read between the lines honestly good luck with that

I don't think most people can even read between the lines, and especially men when it comes to women.

What would an AI actually do?

[timholman]

Based on how I've seen most people use Tinder, a truly advanced artificial intelligence would simply connect them to a local escort service.

Re:What would an AI actually do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have moderator points to burn and would mod you up but I'd much rather add to what you have to say here.
For those of you who have never used Internet dating sites (especially the free ones), they're full of prostitutes and fake accounts that exist just to lure men to pay porn sites. A large fraction of the women who are not prostitutes or fake accounts, don't seem particularly interested in getting involved with anyone, they're just there for the attention ("Look at me, look at me! I'm so awesome! YOU CAN'T HAVE ME, but LOOK AT ME!"). I'd estimate maybe 5% or so of the women you'd find on a dating site are legit -- and frankly, maybe 1 out of ten (or less) are anyone you'd want to have anything to do with anyway. Internet dating sites are more or less the last resort for the desperate, and as such not worth anyones' time.

Now, you're going to try to create a so-called 'AI' to set you up with a date? LOL, that's a train wreck even before it happens. Even human beings have problems weeding out the liars and you expect some half-assed machine intelligence to do a better job? Don't waste your time. Besides which, anyone using Tinder isn't looking for a 'relationship', they're looking for attention and for quick sex. Therefore this is the dumbest idea I've heard yet on the subject of so-called 'AI'. You'd do just as well closing your eyes and throwing a dart at a wall full of profile pics.

I can see it now.

[nimbius]

siri: there are 20 eligible singles in your area you should consider! shall I set up a date?
me: *loads up the Gentoo homepage*
siri:...oh....

Can't be that bad.

[Qbertino]

You can deduct a *lot* from tracking a user these days. Especially with all the data smartphone apps offer up to their suppliers. You basically have a more complete and trustworthy personal profile of a person than the person could probably even willingly give themselves. Sleeping habits, areas of interest, modes of transport, typing speed, wording/education, interests, income, temper, sexual preferences, political affiliation, religious beliefs ... the data hog megacorps of today know *everything* about you.

Having a large set of algorithms chose your partner for you based on such data is most likely to be a better choice than most humans could ever hope to make. The computer already knows much more about both mates than each could know about each other in years. And bring people together who would've never come together under regular circumstances.

Finding a fitting mate would actually be one of the better reasons for me to offer my data up to some app.

My 2 cents.

Re:Can't be that bad.

[Ol Olsoc]

You can deduct a *lot* from tracking a user these days. Especially with all the data smartphone apps offer up to their suppliers. You basically have a more complete and trustworthy personal profile of a person than the person could probably even willingly give themselves.

But here's the rub. While these things go after compatibility and look for similarities, there is something to be said for differences as well. I'm coming up on my 40th anniversary, yet my wife and I are almost ridiculously different. We are roughly the same IQ, but she is very people oriented and sociable. Has a ton of friends. One of te most friendly people you'll meet, with a slightly dirty sense of humor.

Me, First of all, I'm kind of irritating, and hyper analytical. I have just a few close friends, and until I analyze a person, am very reticent with them. I'm an outside person, she only is when on vacation. I'm a bit of a thrill seeker, she isn't. We are seriously opposite But we actually use these differences rather than insist that the other be like we are.

She wants us to try one of these dating services because she says we'd be the last two people they would hook up together.

This is how AI is supposed to work!

[Gravis Zero]

We know all the scenarios where AI fucks us over, it's about time we heard about the scenarios where AI gets us fucked. ;)

Re:This is how AI is supposed to work!

[adam.voss]

We know all the scenarios where AI fucks us over, it's about time we heard about the scenarios where AI gets us fucked. ;)

How do we know it won't do both? It could control the gene pool.

Re:How is this news?

[PPH]

That doesn't turn out well

Re:Are people still using that?

[Grishnakh]

When I was using Tinder (up until a few months ago), I did notice a LOT of trans-girls (men dressing and acting like women). There used to be hookers, but those seem to have disappeared; perhaps Tinder got a lot better at dealing with that problem. But for the 25+ ages, and esp. the 30+ people, it's all real people AFAICT. But there are a lot of trannies, at least in my metro area, though they all seem to be between 25 and 30. The sad thing, however, is that the trannies are, on average, a lot prettier than the real women. American women these days really look awful.

Needs to be handled differently, IMO ....

[King_TJ]

I used the online dating sites pretty heavily when I was younger and still single. (I'm married to a woman who I met via OKCupid, as a matter of fact.)

I think like many things in life, you only get out of it what you put into it. If you approach the sites with the "kid in a candy store" mentality (which MANY men and women do), it turns into a way to flip through hundreds of photos to pick out only the people you find the most physically attractive, and to see how many of them you can get to go out with you. A whole lot of people who really tried to leverage the power of the dating site to find you better matches gets squandered or trampled on by all the people "clicking the pretty pictures". (After all, why waste hours taking numerous personality profile tests, writing a complete "bio", etc. -- if all of it was ignored by the majority of people anyway?)

Realistically? I know I'm not a bad looking guy, but I'm not a "head turner" either. I think I rank somewhere solidly in the "average" category on looks. So if we're only competing on a selection of photos alone, I'm going to be consistently left in the dust by guys 10 years younger than me, guys who go to the gym at least 3-4 times a week, etc. That's fine with me though, because I wasn't looking to date models who walked right off of photo shoots either.

So what happened for me is that I actually had some of my most enjoyable dates with women I met on Craigslist personals -- where half the time, they didn't even share a photo. I just went by what they wrote and how they wrote it, to determine if they seemed intelligent, relatively honest, and if we had some things in common. None of these dates led to anything serious, but they felt "genuine". Both of us were going into it pretty much blindly, with "blank slates" as expectations. And even when there was no chemistry, we were able to walk away as friends who just enjoyed a really good dinner or a few games of billiards or what-not.

When I put in the effort to really read through detailed profiles, compare "compatibility percentages" based on tests we both took, and contact people who shared mutual interests and beliefs over on sites like OKCupid? I generally got no response at all. I really think most women on there were just overwhelmed with a large number of initial contacts from all the guys who just said, "Ooh.... sexy photo. I'm gonna chat her up!", and/or got sucked into behaving the same way on the site.

When I finally met the woman I married, it was only because I'd already given up using the web site and left my profile sitting out there for months. I got an email notification that she had sent me a "Woo!", so I signed back in to see who did it and what their story was. That's when it turned out she lived in a different state, but had gotten so frustrated by the lack of communications with people taking the site seriously that she kept expanding her search outside her city and eventually to other states. She liked what I had to say in my profile, so sent me the "Woo" rather than wasting time writing a big letter for nothing (like had so often happened to her previously).

Tindr wasn't even a "thing" yet back then, but when I read about it as a new dating app, I realized it captured the essence of how most people were really using all of these other sites to begin with. Why bother taking quizzes or writing a lot of content? Just show the sexy photos and let people hit on each other....

Attaching THAT to a personal assistant is going to be relatively pointless, IMO. But a site that makes a serious effort to collect user info and preferences, that actually gets USED by serious individuals who want to fill all of that out? That could work.

Re:do you want to get mugged behind a bar?

[Salgak1]

I beg to differ. That's where I met my wife, 20 years ago. I have a number of friends who met their spouse online. I even know a couple who met online BEFORE the Net, on CompuServe.

There are real women, and real men, on the net. But you generally need to be a decent person to connect with them . . . .

Re:this is great!

[torkus]

Don't bother...Siri/Alexa/Google already have let her know and put her in touch with a good lawyer.

Shakes 8 ball...

[TheOuterLinux]

"Your perfect match is a penguin."