Love and Relationships with AI
Final Project
Thesis
Artificial intelligence is providing many more opportunities to meet people and communicate when it comes to our love lives. Although there are some complications and concerns, AI will help our relationships flourish in new ways.
Love Back Then…
Back in the generation of our parents who were dating in the 1980s, people met through friends, school, or at live events, and the technology used to communicate with each other was drastically different than what we have now. Back in their day, they would use the house landline to call their significant others. “My mom would sit for hours talking on the phone with my future dad,” said Isabel, a University of Colorado sophomore, “the whole family knew and complained that the phone line was in use and could hear on another line who you were talking to. And my dad had to plan dates ahead of time. Families knew you had a date, since you had to borrow the family car.” Just a few decades ago people got to know each other in person or over the phone since texting and other technologies did not exist at that time. In a sense people got to know each other on a deeper level by these ways of communication because there was more intimacy, you could hear the inflection in a person’s voice, you could perceive nuanced facial expressions, you could assess all the intricacies of behavior (are they on time? Does he walk ahead of me?). And people wanted to see each other in person as much as they could to increase the bond.
Present Day Love…
In the present day, we seem to have many more opportunities to meet and interact with a potential love. We have dating apps, facetime, social media, texting and so much more. Apps and websites such as Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, Hello Cupid, Match.com and many more allow us to meet people constantly online, hundreds a day, if we like! There are both pros and cons to this new wave of technology.
Dating apps vary in quality and some seem to be better than others. These apps use algorithms to find people of your preferred age group within a certain distance from you to produce matches that you can “like.” Tinder is one of the most common apps on the market. Participants can post several pictures of themselves and a short bio, however, one issue that has been brought up with Tinder is that it is too appearance based and doesn’t provide enough information to judge character. An app such as Hinge however is better because participants can include more information about themselves and assess not only physical appearance but also personal interests. Dating apps are great to help us meet new people and have many different options, still, we need to be careful with meeting people online. We need to feel safe and comfortable while engaging with a virtual stranger.
In his book How to Speak Machine, John Maeda describes the Japanese concept of omotenashi. “Omotenashi roughly translates to “hospitality,” but it means much more than just making someone feel at home. It has to do with how people are greeted and sent off, how they are served, how well you can anticipate their needs and outdo their expectations.” (Maeda, 2019). Omotenashi is to know what the customer wants without being asked to do it. It is rooted in the notion of being efficient, and algorithms are trying to gather information constantly throughout our internet searching to become more perceptive. “Every time you shop online, every time you sign up for a newsletter, or register on a website, or enquire about a new car, or fill out a warranty card, or buy a new home, or register to vote – every time you hand over any data at all – your information is being collected and sold to a data broker,” (Fry, 2019). On a dating app, this results in providing the user options of potential partners who have similar interests to you. The app can connect you with what you are seeking, making your online searching for your partner very efficient.
Social media is another great way to meet people. Either through direct messaging each other on an app or finding someone who looks interesting on your feed, it opens up a whole new door to getting to know a person and what they like to do and post online. Social media also gives you an outlet to share your relationship and post pictures with your partner.
The Future of Love…
When it comes to the future of love, we will be able to advance methods of connection even more so than we experience now. New apps and ways of finding love are being created every day. The article “AI wants to determine if you are in love or not” by Harmon Leon notes that the app called Mei is “the first-ever messaging app with a built-in relationship AI. ...and can deliver real-time personalized analysis and romance advice based on your text conversations” (Leon, 2019). The app looks at your compatibility with the person you are texting and will actually give you advice on how to respond to the person. This is a new technology that is being improved upon and could lead to a very promising way of online dating.
Martin Coulter in “Will Virtual Reality and AI Help Us to Find Love or Make us Lonelier” says human physical chemistry might be a vital missing ingredient, and a solution to help AI would be to incorporate DNA analysis. The dating app Pheramor claims it can help people find love according to their physical chemistry and “social alignment” (Coulter, 2019). This sounds very promising, but will it actually work, and can AI truly predict our compatibility with each other.
They are also trying to make products that will enhance our distant relationships and create alternatives to in-person pleasure. One example would be that they are trying to create silicon lips which you and your partner could insert your lips into the artificial lip and be able to kiss each other halfway across the world. “Devices that incorporate these more complex senses are already being tested. The “Kissenger” (a portmanteau of “kiss” and “messenger”), developed by Prof Cheok and PhD student Emma Yann Zhang, allows users to smooch from anywhere in the world via an interactive silicon “lip”, so long as they have an internet connection.” (Coulter, 2019). This is the beginning of an idea that could further develop.
These are all ways in which our love lives and relationships could be impacted by artificial intelligence and algorithms in the future, we just need to see where it takes us.
How should we feel about artificial intelligence in our love lives?
There are many different perspectives and points of view when it comes to how we should feel about artificial intelligence in our love lives. It both has its negatives and positives. It is a great way to meet new people, stay in contact with others and branch out. However, it is also providing more obstacles because we become desensitized and are not as comfortable when we talk with people in person and try to create real life bonds in a more face to face interaction. In the future it will possibly be very finding new people but we need to make sure that it enhances our personal relationships and doesn’t create a set back where it is harder to communicate with people in person and create a road block of how to build connections outside of technology. In person relationships are some of the most impactful ones and we need to be careful when surfing the internet online and if we are trying to find someone who is worth talking to.
Reference List
Fry, H. (2019). Hello world: being human in the age of algorithms. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Pappano, L. (2017, April 4). Learning to Think like a Computer. Learning to Think like a Computer. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/education/edlife/teaching-students-computer-code.html?_r=0
Maeda, J. (2019). How to Speak Machine (1st ed.). https://howtospeakmachine.com/2019/11/17/to-know-you-better-is-to-serve-you-better/
Fair is not the default: The myth of neutral AI | Josh Lovejoy | TEDxSanJuanIsland. (2017, December 13). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF98WCdvR6U