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AI is Already Changing Dating, Whether You Use it Or Not · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: And Samantha.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: And welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You, a production
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. And once again, we are thrilled to be
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: joined by the charming, the charismatic Bridget Todd. Welcome, Bridget.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. Excited as always.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: To be here. Yes, we are excited as always to
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: have you. Well, how have you been, Bridget?
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Things are good.
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: As you both know, I do have COVID currently. Just
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: a little PSA for everybody listening. The doctor told me
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: that COVID is having a moment right now. So even
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: if you're not hearing about that, because I did not
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: hear about that, that's what's going on. So protect yourselves
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: and your loved ones. I'm feeling a little bit better.
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: But yeah, COVID is the main thing on the agenda
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: for me today.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, a good PSA. I've heard that from several
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: friends of mine, too. So it hasn't gone away.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Don't forget about it.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Don't forget COVID and COVID will remind you.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: As RFK may try to tell you otherwise, COVID is
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: still here. It is still needed to be combated. So
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: if you can't take precaution unless you want to be sick.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: And if you are sick, make sure you take the
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: time off you need, Miss Bridget.
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: Yes, I this is the first thing I've done since
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: taking like basically a week off.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: Don't even get me started on RFK. And this is
• 1:40
  Speaker 4: a non sequitur. Am I is it just me or
• 1:42
  Speaker 4: is it like every other day? It's like, oh, don't
• 1:44
  Speaker 4: eat rice.
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: Don't eat this. Don't eat that. Bugs in this poop
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: in that knives in this. You're like, what can I do?
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: What can I eat?
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: The medals in this one and even the ones that
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: you want to love, Costco, turns out they failed you
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: in some way. And I'm like, well, outside of me
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: buying chickens and raising things on my own, which, by
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: the way, five tomatoes does not sustain you for a
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: long time.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: I did see someone say, I was like on threads
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: and I was like, because apparently there's a problem with
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: the beef. I have no idea, but something's going on
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: with the beef. And someone said, oh, well, I don't
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: have this problem because my family, we just go in
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: with another family. We just all just go in on
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: a cow. So we always know exactly where our beef
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: comes from. And I'm thinking, okay, that's... Nice for you.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: But I don't know that most people can just go
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: in on a cow together. He's like, oh, just fill
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: your deep freeze full of steaks. It's like, OK, I
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: live in a one bedroom apartment. Where's my deep freeze?
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Even with my house, I'm like, I don't know
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: where a freezer would go.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: One.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: Two, there's all this comment about possible blackouts, which we've
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: seen around the country that we might not be talking
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: a lot about between Indiana. I've seen it in Alabama.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: We've talked about it in even Tennessee. What happens when
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: the freezer goes out? And we all have like poison
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: food and every power goes out for, they're talking about
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: 18 months at one point. Like, I'm like, what? And
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: this could be all a part of the Project 2025.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: So what are we supposed to be doing? We're going
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: to eat grass.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I, things don't feel great.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: It has been phenomenal because with the beef stuff in
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: that conversation and like, oh no, Trump is doing all
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: the things that we don't want him to do and
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: he's turning his back. on the farmers in the U.S. Like,
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of people pop up and be like, hey,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: we did not vote for this. We are also farmers.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: So if you want to come direct to us, you can.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: I love seeing that and the people realizing that there
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: is opportunities to possibly get a whole cow if you
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: have the space and money. That feels like very, like, privileged.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: But there are opportunities where we can support where we
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: can and maybe learn about local resources. I do love
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: that turn.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I like that too.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: If you are a non-MAGA local farmer or like a
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: Black-owned farm and you want to sell me a cow,
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: I will go in on a cow.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Just don't show me the pictures of the cow. I
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: can't see it being cute first. You can't do that
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: to me.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, then I've gone in on a pet. I'll have
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: another mouse to feed. Figure out how I'm going to
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: feed this cow.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Right, because I'm like, oh, that's it.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I'm done.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: I have to make this one live forever.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: This is true. I've witnessed it in Samantha with crabs once.
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: Crabs?
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Yes. Did you, like, get a blue crab to eat
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: and then you're like, actually, I've already given him a name.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Pinchy.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: It's a bit worse than that. It was bad.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: I had nightmares.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: I had nightmares.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: I had nightmares about it.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: No, we ate the crab in complete silence. It was
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the saddest meal. I did.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: I think I took a bite and I was like, no,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: I can't do it.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: Did you, like, become attached to the crab? Emotionally?
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: We suffocated them, Bridget.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: Oh, no.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: We didn't mean to. We were just ill-prepared and then
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: I just felt guilty and I was like, dreamt that
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: they were trying to get out of the box and crying.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Crab cries.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, look, this is too much trauma. I need to
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: move on.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I didn't mean to traumatize you at the start of
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: this episode. I'm sorry.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: That's okay, because I know what's going to fix me.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: I know what's going to fix me. Bridget, your topic
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: is going to fix me, and I'm so ready.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, yes. I'm actually excited.
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: As you all know, I have my first audio book out,
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: Love at First Prompt, AI and the Future of Intimacy.
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: And it looks at the ways that tech companies are
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: really inserting themselves in the most intimate places of our lives.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: You know, not just the relationship between woman and crab.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: The relationship between sex and romance and therapy and grief,
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: emotional support, these things that we think of as like human.
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: And so much of the reaction and conversation has been
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: about these kind of extreme examples, right? Like somebody falling
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: in love with Chachi PT, somebody having an AI boyfriend, girlfriend, partner,
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: or having sex with AI. The kind of thing that
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: when people hear it, They automatically think, oh, well, that's
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: not me. That will never be me. I cannot see
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: myself in this at all. But lately, I've been thinking
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: about something that is probably more relevant to your average person,
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: because you do not have to date AI or have
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: sex with AI to have AI involved.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: In your dating life.
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: And in fact, if you are listening to this and
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: you are single and dating, particularly on dating apps, there's
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: a good chance that AI is already all up and
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: through your dating life. Because Dating apps are already using
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: AI to decide who you should date, how you should date,
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: how you guys connect with each other, your profiles, you know,
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: start conversations, all of that. People are using ChatGPT to
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: write flirtatious messages, analyze texts from the people that they're dating,
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: get relationship advice, etc.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: etc.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: And some dating app executives actually envision this future where
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: not too long from now, AI agents will just go
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: on dates with other AI agents before you even bother
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: swiping on each other and that that is the future
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: of dating. So I want to pause there. What do
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: you think of this as sort of the current and
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: not too distant future of what dating might look like?
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I think it's kind of a complicated answer. I would say...
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: Just a disclaimer, I've never used a dating app.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Not once?
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Not once, no. So sort of outside of my realm.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I think there's a kind of a gradation of how
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I feel about this because it would depend on the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: ways that the person I was interacting with or the
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: AI I was interacting with was using AI. Like I
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: have a knee-jerk answer that I would like to know
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: it was AI, but I know that's not always the case.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And that people have been in some ways or others
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: using AI for a long time in terms of dating,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: whether that's the point you're going to make, whether they
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: knew it or not. So I think for me, it's
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: sort of a case by case basis, like a gradation.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: See, my immediate reaction is horror. Because first of all,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: dating is hell, especially for so many people right now,
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: dating apps. I think this is when we talked about
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Gen Z kind of giving up. They're like, yeah, this
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: is not it. This is not it. And then you
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: add AI to it, which, you know, when I think
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: about catfishing and people altering their pictures or I know
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: they're sending messages, now they're doing videos and such, I'm
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: sure a portion of that is AI. Well, we know
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: when they're altering their own images and taking stuff out.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: That's a whole different conversation. But the idea that AI,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: which it feels just intrusive in itself, maybe I'm just
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: too old-fashioned. I've already said if my current relationship, which
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: is great and dandy, does not work out, I'm done.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: You're it. I'm done.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I'm done.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: I will find myself that community for me and my
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: friends just to be each other's support. Like that is
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: the commune, which I still want now, to be honest.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: The commune that is needed so that we can all
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: support each other because, yo, it's crazy out there and
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: it's scary. And then add AI.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Ugh.
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: Could I ask before you were in a relationship, what
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: was your relationship like with dating apps?
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: So I absolutely used the dating apps. I was I
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: was very like I had different standards of like what
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: was good and what wasn't good. Some of them were
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: too scary, like eHarmony was too much. Plenty of Fish
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: was way too much. So like I would not pay
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: for the subscriptions because I was like, this is this
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: is I don't like it. I did appreciate Bumble, but
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: turns out I'm not as confident in reaching out to
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: people as I would like to be. So Bumble was
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: kind of a fail. I did go on one or
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: two dates, but I'm like, I'm not good at this.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: I guess those questionnaires are probably AI because they do like,
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: you can have this starter conversation. I was like, all right,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: that's fine. So that is kind of I didn't have
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: anything about it, but I failed with that one. So
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: my go-to was the, what's that Facebook one?
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: OkCupid.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: OkCupid was nice because people answering the questions and I
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: could immediately, like I could star the questions that I
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: want to know the answer to, that if they answered it,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: that I could immediately dismiss them.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: So this was why I like being like, oh, you're Republican?
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Absolutely not. You're this? You're absolutely not. You're racist? Absolutely not.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: I had those moments. So I guess that was technically
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: AI too, but. I wasn't thinking on that realm. Oh, Bridget,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: I'm having a moment of crisis.
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: That's my sort of point is that I think that
• 10:55
  Speaker 4: when we think about technology and AI intimacy, it makes
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: sense to sort of be looking at these other angles,
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: not just, you know, does somebody have an AI boyfriend, girlfriend?
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: Are they having sex with AI? But also, what does
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: it look like when someone is not trying to use
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: AI to replace somebody they want to date, but they're
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: increasingly technology like AI sits between you and the person
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: that you might want to date. And then what does
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: it look like when things like race and gender are
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: layered into that equation? And as somebody who's just written
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: a book about this, I'm thinking a lot about technology
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: and intimacy and AI, but this is not really new, really.
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: Even before we get into AI being increasingly layered into
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: dating apps, dating apps were already using things like algorithms
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: to shape who we date. I was on the podcast
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: recently and the host was like, oh, well, would you
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: ever let AI pick a date for you?
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: And they said this as.
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: If it was like a really out there, you know,
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: far flung idea. And I thought about it and I said, well,
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: is that really so different than an algorithm deciding who
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: I might date for me, even if it's not specifically
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: an AI generated algorithm? Because That is what's happening for
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: most people who are using dating apps. Like if you
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: use a dating app, the potential matches that are surfaced
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: for you are being surfaced algorithmically. And I think that
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: that can be one thing that gets lost when we
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: talk about AI and dating, that we didn't suddenly start
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: allowing technology to influence our dating choices when chat GPT
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: came around. Dating apps have actually been algorithmically mediating attraction
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: for a really long time.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: As someone who has never used a dating app but
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: has witnessed friends do it, has heard the complaints, talk
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: me through that.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: So when you go on a dating app, it's not
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: just sort of randomly giving you a stack of every
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: available single or hopefully single in your city.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: I guess you never know. Right.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: Their systems are deciding who gets shown to who. It's
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: learning from how people interact with different profiles and then
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: making judgments about who might be a potential good match.
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: And the same way that an algorithm that runs your
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: Twitter or your Facebook or your Instagram can walk people
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: down paths things like extremist pipelines or keep them locked
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: in dangerous silos. Oftentimes, algorithmic dating can get kind of
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: ugly when you layer in things like race and gender.
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: There's this phenomenal sociologist, April Williams, who has a really
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: useful way of thinking about this. She has a great
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: book called Not My Type, all about looking at the
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: ways that algorithms have baked things like that phobia and racism, sexism,
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: unfair biases around beauty standards, all kinds of other kinds
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: of isms, how all that stuff has really been baked
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: into the process of online dating, not by mistake, but
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: by intention and with design. So I have not been
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: on a dating app in many, many, many years. But
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: my single friends, especially my Black girlfriends, will tell me
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: that At this point, they're basically unusable, right? It's like
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: you are kind of setting yourself up for a lot
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: of negative experiences. And it's very easy to internalize that
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: and blame yourself.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: But really, it's the platforms. It's kind of by design.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: And so, you know.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: Using a dating app is not like walking into a
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: bar and seeing who's there. It's more like having an
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: algorithmic matchmaker standing between you and the bar. That matchmaker
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: is assessing you, everybody in the bar, and making decisions
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: about who you ever might even get the opportunity to consider,
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: let alone who you would have the opportunity to say yes,
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: swipe yes or no on. Even the person, like, if
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: they show up for you to actually consider, they're making
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: that decision. And that matters because... our attractions don't happen
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: in a vacuum, right? We're bringing all of these hierarchies
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: and biases that we know are everywhere in the offline
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: world when it comes to dating. We are basically just
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: bringing that into the digital world algorithmically. And so Williams,
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: that sociologist, her book looks at how what she calls
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: sexual racism has really been automated into the experience of
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: dating and how that has just become embedded into dating platforms,
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: particularly for Black women.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and she has a pretty stark example of this.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, she told me about this one example from her
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: book where a Black woman who was using Hinge said
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: that she was just kind of getting sick of the apps.
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: She wasn't meeting anybody new, wasn't seeing any matches that
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: she liked. So she deleted her account and then recreated
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: it using the exact same pictures, pictures that depicted her
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: as the Black woman that she is. But then she
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: listed her race as white. And suddenly this person profile
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: of a Black woman whose race is listed as white
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: starts getting shown much more desirable matches. And the experience
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: is a lot better for her, even though her pictures
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: still illustrate her as the Black woman that she is.
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: And so I think those kind of stories can really
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: complicate the story that we tell ourselves about how biases
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: show up in dating, right? We usually think of somebody
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: saying like, oh... An individual user looking at a Black
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: woman and saying, I'm not attracted to her. But what
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: if the Black woman never even appears in that person's
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: stack in the first place?
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: Before they even have a chance to decide, swipe right,
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: swipe left, yes, no.
• 16:23
  Speaker 4: The algorithm and the technology has already decided what profiles
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: do or do not make it onto your screen.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: Williams, again, has this point that, like, even what you
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: think of as your type doesn't come out of nowhere, right?
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: It's based in, like, the people that we grew up around,
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: what our families taught us, the couples that we saw,
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: the movies that we watched, whatever ideas that we have
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: when it comes to class and race and gender and beauty.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: All of those things go to shape what we see
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: as desirable. So when millions of people bring those preferences
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: onto a dating app, the app is not receiving, like,
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: a pristine data set of preferences objective human attraction or something.
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: It's actually receiving data produced by all of us, the
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: people who live in society where racism and sexism and
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: fatphobia and classism exists, and the technology just learns from
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: it and reflects it back at us. This is a
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: point that I make a lot when I talk about AI.
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: It's very easy to think of AI as like a hyper-aware,
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: sentient computer brain, but it's just us. It's just humans.
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: So all the different biases and hangups that we know
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: that we have as humans are simply reflected in AI
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: and in some ways intensified by it.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: That makes me wonder because my name in itself sounds
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: very white, very, very white. But also I have gone
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: to the point where sometimes I just left off. You
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: can say I prefer not to say when you have
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: that profile just because I'm like, I don't know what
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: this is going to bring. But that does make a
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: lot of sense. Like this was again, but probably eight,
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: nine years ago or 10 years ago, maybe when I
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: was doing that. So it feels like if. AI was
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: kind of behind like the preferences because I kept seeing
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: the same people. Maybe I was on it for way
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: too long.
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: We'll, you know, don't talk about that. But in general,
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: like I would have the same people, even if I
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: went to a different site, even if I felt like
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: I was using different preferences, like, you know, Hinge is
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: different from Coffee Meets Bagel from OkCupid. So you had
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: different kinds of ways of being hooked up. And when
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: I mean like Coffee Meets Bagel, that was actually attached
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: to Facebook. So you had to know somebody before you can,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: you know, link up with somebody. But it ended up
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: being the same people all the time. So I wondered
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: if that happened like eight, nine, 10 years ago, how
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: much worse or how much more of an influence does
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: AI have now?
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: Oh, so that's such a good question.
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: And I would say the big change from five, six
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: years ago, even going back 10 years and today, is
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: I think it's become a lot more powerful. There was
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: a time where we all accepted, okay, the dates are
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: algorithmically matched and generated.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: But now you have.
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: That, but also AI, not just deciding who you will date,
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: but also helping you date them, how you date them,
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: what your connections look like. I just wrote a piece
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: about this for the outlet you should care about, because I,
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: in reporting my audio book, have really been struck by
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: how quickly major dating companies have been building AI directly
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: into the dating process. So if you open up Tinder...
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: Tinder already has AI-powered matching. It also has systems that
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: can learn from your profile and your answers to the questions.
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: If you opt in, Tinder can even scroll and analyze
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: information on your phone's camera roll. So not pictures that
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: you have added to Tinder. It just automatically gives Tinder,
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: you have to opt into this, but it automatically gives
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: Tinder access to your camera roll. And then from that information,
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: it personalizes its algorithm to who it thinks that you
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: might like to date. So like stuff that's like gets
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: pretty nitty gritty.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Hinge already has.
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: Introduced AI tools that help give you a makeover of
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: your profile to make sure that it's the best it
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: can be. It can help improve your prompts. Grindr has
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: explicitly said that they want to become, quote, an AI-first company.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: It has a system that they call GayEye.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: Get it?
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: Because Grindr is a.
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: Gay dating and hookup site. So it's not AI, it's GayEye.
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: I think I'm saying it right.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: G-A-I. Little G, big A-I. Stop it.
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: And so their system is really wild. So it's being
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: developed to assist conversations and connections. including surfacing and summarizing
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: old conversations so you can remember what you previously talked
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: about with somebody else. And so if you're talking to
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: somebody that you might want to date or have sex
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: with or whatever, and they remember some little throwaway detail,
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: they remember that you love daffodils, you might be touched, right?
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: You're like, oh my God, this person remembered this, you know,
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: little detail about me. They're so thoughtful, right? they could
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: have just been using this AI system to resurface that conversation.
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: And so you might be thinking like, oh, they really
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: liked me. And it's like, no, no, I just have
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: this like AI generated dating assistant that helps me remember
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: the little details that you said.
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: So I look like a thoughtful guy.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah. And that's kind of the thing that I
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: keep coming back to is like, some of this reminds
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: me of our conversation we had about technology that sounds
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: like it's making everything easier, but it's actually making more work.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Because to me, like, just dealing with AI and doing
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: all of this, I can see how it could be easier,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: but I can also see how it'd be more work.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: But also it's just the person who sends me that
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: daffodil thing. Are they like a pickup artist? Like, do
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like, yeah, because that seems
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: like a, that meant something to me when it was
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: you that remembered it. But I also understand dating online
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: is a mess and you're talking to a lot of
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: different people. And I get that maybe you don't remember that.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: The Daffodil comment. So I guess that's kind of the
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: two conflicting things I'm having at that.
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm glad that you brought that up because I
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: did want to spend a little time there. And I'll
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: say like, again, I have not been out there in
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: a long time. I'm not dating. But I have a
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: lot of friends who are and they all just universally
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: tell me that it's hell. It's exhausting. It's a lot
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: of work. The apps aren't great. The people who are
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: out there dating, they don't seem like they're having a
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: good time right now. And I do think something interesting
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: is going on where the demographic age-wise that uses AI
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: the most is young people, Gen Z. And so they
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: are also the demographic that hates AI the most. There
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: was a Gallup survey that said that 83% of Gen
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: Z adults and 74% of K-12 students believe that AI
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: shortcuts make future learning and critical thinking more difficult. So
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: these are the same people who are using it the
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: most who also are like, we hate it the most.
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: And I think something is going on here similarly with dating,
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: where people who are dating clearly report a lot of
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: AI fatigue. They don't like AI in their dating life.
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: It's not something that they're into. However, they are also
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: increasingly using the AI that they say that they don't want.
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: And I think that it gets at what you're kind
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: of getting at, Annie, of like, I think that it's
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: a testament to how bad dating is that people are
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: so fatigued with it that they're thinking, I don't even
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: like AI, but if you're going to tell me AI
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: can make this hellscape better, I'll try it. I think
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: that's really what's going on.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: Dating sucks.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: So bad, maybe this AI technology that I don't even
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: like or want can help. And it seems like people
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: really are using AI for dating. A Kinsey Institute and
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: Match study cited a report that found that more than
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: a quarter of singles aged 18 to 39 now use
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: AI in their dating lives. And that's a 300% increase
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: from the previous year. And at the same time, nearly
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: half of those same respondents said that they view AI negatively.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: In romantic contexts.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: So something is clearly going on where people don't like AI.
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: They specifically don't want it in their dating life, but
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: they are using it in their dating life. And I think,
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: I mean, this is just my takeaway. I think it
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: has to be that like, that's how bad dating is
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: right now. That the people are turning to technology they
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: don't even like in the hopes that maybe it might make.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: It a little bit better.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Do they actually know they're using it?
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: They know.
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: My read is that these are not people who are
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: following a prompt that they saw on Hinge, not really
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: knowing consciously that it's AI. These are people who are
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: putting text messages into chat GPT and being like, tell me,
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: what do they mean by this?
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Tell me, you know what I mean?
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: Like they're like an intentional and specific use of AI.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: For a romantic use case.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: That's a very good distinction and a very good question
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: because some people probably don't know how much of dating
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: stuff when it comes to apps is actually AI generated.
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: But I think the majority of these are people who
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: do know and they're turning to it for that specific
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: use case.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I would say I was an unwilling player
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: when I realized as I'm talking to you, I'm like,
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: that probably was AI. Oh, no.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: I mean, I just learned this too because I make
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: a lot of stuff for my Instagram using Canva. And
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: I just use like a freebie Canva. Like I'm no
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: Canva whiz. I guess I never really thought about it,
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: but it's like if you use certain tools on Canva,
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: those are technically AI tools. But it's like I would
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: not have necessarily thought like, oh, I'm not like logging
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: into ChatGPT. I'm doing this manually on Canva. I wouldn't
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: have thought that their background remover tool was AI, but
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: it is.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: You touch on some ways it can look, but what
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: does it look like to have AI in your love life?
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it looks like AI help determining who you see,
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: helping you decide which pictures of yourself to present. If
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: you're a real so-and-so, maybe AI is cleaning up your
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: pictures a little bit.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: I would not recommend that one.
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: It can help you write your profile, help you figure
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: out what to say to dates, remember things that you've
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: already said. And eventually, again, if this vision that tech
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: leaders like Whitney Wolf Hurd, who was one of the
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: people who co-founded Bumble, comes up with, it'll be... conducting
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: the earliest stages of courtship on your behalf via AI
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: agents sort of dating and sizing each other up. And
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: so in that older model, algorithms were the matchmaker. Now
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: in this current model, AI is your matchmaker, photographer, stylist, wingman,
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: flirtation coach, relationship interpreter, therapist, and eventually the proxy on
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: the date itself. So again, even if you are someone
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: who would never, have never had an AI girlfriend or
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: boyfriend or had sex with AI, I guess the question
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: I would ask is like, at what point are you
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: even dating another person? And at what point are you
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: dating another person through this layer of technology and AI?
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, Lord, this is taking me back to the fact
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: that we're going to have to watch Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson.
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: Her! Oh, my God.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: Because in my head, I'm like, oh.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: It is one of my favorite movies. Anytime. Put me in, coach.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and that goes back to kind of, I think,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: my anxiety that I was mentioning. It's like, at what
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: point is it? does this person actually care about me?
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: And I know we have a connection and it's not
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: just that they're using AI. And this is really fascinating
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: to me because you've been discussing how some people see
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: this as so far flung, like I wouldn't use this,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: I would never. But clearly people are using AI and
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: knowingly using AI. And their love lives in this way.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: So I'm curious how people who are in charge, the
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: kind of tech leaders, are pitching this.
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: So tech leaders and the people who run dating apps
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: are kind of pitching AI as a solution to what
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: I think we've identified by now is like a real problem.
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: Like dating apps kind of suck. People are so sick
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: of dating apps. Dating app burnout is extremely widespread. A
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: 2025 Forbes health survey found that 78% of dating app
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: users reported experiencing burnout sometimes. Among Gen Z respondents, that
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: goes up to 79%. That's a lot, right? And I
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: guess against that backdrop, it's not difficult to understand why
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: AI might be presented as an appealing solution to the
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: genuine problem of dating being exhausting and dating apps being exhausting.
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: you know, to do well on a dating app, you've
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: got to take good pictures, make a profile, swipe through
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: hundreds of people, come up with something interesting to say.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: I never really did.
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: Dating apps too much, but like when I was sort
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: of more dating, having to have that introductory conversation over.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: And over again. Oh, so how many siblings do you have? Oh,
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: so where are you from?
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, like, like I got to a point where I
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: was like, I can't, I can't have this conversation again
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: anymore or I'll scream. You know, you've got to remember
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: that they have a sister in Baltimore and that they
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: are allergic to cilantro. And then you got to figure
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: out if somebody is actually interested in you or they
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: just want to have sex with you or they're.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: Like, I don't know. It's just like, it's just a lot.
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: And then on top of that, you've got to deal
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: with the sort of emotionally vulnerable and charged nature of
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: having to like put yourself in vulnerable situations and deal
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: with rejection. And so all of that is part of
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: dating in 2026. The tech industry and the dating app industry,
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: their pitch is essentially all of this business of human
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: connection is complicated, time-consuming, unpredictable, awkward, challenging, vulnerable. What if
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: you didn't have to do so much of that? What
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: if you saw all of that As a problem that
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: needed to be solved. And the solve was AI. And
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: so I can understand that position for sure. But personally,
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: to me, it kind of sounds like trying to optimize
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: out the thing that is actually dating and getting to
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: know and potentially connecting with another person.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to sugarcoat it. That's hard as f * * k.
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: But like, that does seem to be the point of
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: dating is that kind of complicated, vulnerable, challenging thing that
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: might get you to the other end where you're in
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: a relationship with somebody that you can, you know, stand
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: to have a dinner with or something.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know why, but my mind just went back
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: to like the Mulan matchmaker. Oh, yes. Because it kind
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: of had this moment of like, AI has now taken
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: over being the matchmaker and getting the say so of like,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I'm going to look at you, but you have to be,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: and this is all directed at women, of course, being like,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: you have to follow these rules and then I will
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: find you a husband that you are worthy of.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: And you'll bring honor to them all.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: Must bring honor. That is your only achievement is who
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: you can land. So in my head is, is AI
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: going to be similar to that with like that gender
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: idea of like, all right, women, you have to be
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: all of these things for this guy who might have
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: a good job for you.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: I'm so glad that you phrased it that way because I,
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: this is just my personal opinion. I don't have any research,
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: but I think the answer is yes. I think when
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: you look at how we talk about dating and that
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: inherently becomes a conversation about how we talk about gender,
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: so much of those conversations, I am sorry to say,
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: are not good and they're not good in a specific
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: kind of way where these kind of men's rights, incel adjacent,
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: toxic attitudes about gender and women have increasingly become mainstreamed
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: and normalized in modern dating.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: And that's a real problem.
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: And I think that we're at this place where that
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: is being amplified and pitched back at us using technology
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: like AI, right? And so these very specific attitudes about Gender, worth,
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: these dynamics that kind of make it seem like you
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: can gamify the experience of connecting with another human being,
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: you know, that assigns worth to people based on these
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: very specific numbers, body count.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: Salary, height.
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: All of these incredibly specific things that actually don't get
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: to the business of who somebody is.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: It's a very sad landscape. And I'm sorry to.
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: Say that it's not even one that I, I mean,
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: I spend a lot of time talking about it from
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: the perspective of men and how men boil women down
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: into these boxes based on arbitrary numbers and assigning worth
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: to things like body count. But there's also a language
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: like that for women, you know, that says like somebody
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: is their salary or their height or their body count
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: or this or that or their age. And I just
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: think that we are increasingly normalizing this idea that something
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: as fuzzy as human connection and who draws your eye
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: can be kind of gamified and like boiled down to
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: an algorithm, but that's not really how it works, you know?
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: This is a little bit of a tangent, but I
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: was watching the Manosphere Louis Theroux documentary and he is
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: sitting in on some men's rights podcast where it's like
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: five guys and five girls and Basically, it's just them
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: talking and them denigrating the women because that's what they do.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: And they were talking about what kind of guy do
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: you go for? And they were asking, then the men
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: were also saying, what kind of girls do you go for?
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: And it just made me really sad that everybody there
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: was talking about potential matches in this situation. Like there
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: was a scoreboard or a scorecard that people had to
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: figure out. And nobody said things like, what are their values?
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: Or do they have a good sense of humor? Or,
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: you know, what are they like in a crisis? Would
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: they be a good person to raise a kid with? Like,
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: do I, you know what I mean? Like the things
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: that like when you get a little older and you.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: Get to be my age.
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: The things that you know actually really matter. I don't
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: hear any of that. And it just made me not
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: only sad for them, but that this is what technology
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: like AI is normalizing and replicating for dating.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: And I don't like it.
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: I think it's a real problem that all of these
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: toxic gender dynamics that we know perpetuate the the meat
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: space are just being potentially turbocharged by ai does that
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: make sense.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: No absolutely no i often think that when i hear
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: my friends um usually my girlfriends talking about their experience
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: with online dating and i just think this heteronormative script
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: we've created that has been amplified by technologies like this
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: It's not good for anybody because people, at least in
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: my friend's case, they want to find somebody. And men,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: in this very heterosexual case, they want to find a woman.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: But it's just the way that the power dynamics work
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: and the gender dynamics work that has made it into
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: something far messier and more dangerous than it really needs
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: to be. And I hate seeing it. I don't like
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: it at all.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: People are like, I don't want to deal with that.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: Why would I want to be mixed up in that?
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. When I am listening to their stories, I am like,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: I salute you for putting up with this. You should
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: not have to. This is horrible. One of the other
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: things that is not surprising that translated into this kind
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: of technological world of dating is where a lot of
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: that work of dating comes falls.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: And when you look at gender, this is I found
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: so interesting because if you're a woman who dates men,
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: you already know the work of dating is not always
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: equally distributed. There is a huge body of research and
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: cultural conversation around the fact that women, we just perform
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: a lot more of the emotional labor and heterosexual pairing.
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: So things like Maintaining social relationships, reading social cues, initiating
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: hard conversations, managing other people's feelings, all of that, like
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: women shoulder a lot more of that work when we're in.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: A pairing with men.
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: And so now we have this technology, AI, that potentially
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: could be capable of doing some of those things for us.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: Already we have people who are putting screenshots of conversations
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: into ChatGPT to like suss out what this person meant
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: or asking AI what they should say next. And there
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: was this very interesting, I think it was Business Insider
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: piece about how some young people are even putting on
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: the voice command prompt on ChatGPT and then having their
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: phone open on the table during a date so that
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: they can analyze like how the date went later.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: So that's a thing that... people are doing.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: New fear unlocked.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Seems like a lot of trust issues going on, honestly.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: Again, this is anecdotal, but a lot of my younger
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: friends who date, it is.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: And I sort of get it.
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: How many times are you scrolling social media and you
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: see somebody who has taken... And I'm not talking about
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: situations where somebody is truly being abusive.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: I'm talking about.
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: somebody sent an awkward reply on a dating app and
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: then they screenshot that and put it on social media.
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: It's like, I kind of get why nobody trusts each
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: other in this landscape.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: And so there are all these.
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: Differences between how men and women use AI in dating.
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: One 2026 survey of about a thousand US singles found
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: that men and women were about equally likely to say
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: that they have used AI somewhere in their dating life,
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: but women are much more likely to say that they
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: used AI to analyze conversations and get advice. That's about 52%
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: of women compared to 39% of men. And unsurprisingly, men, meanwhile,
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: we're much more likely to use AI to generate pickup lines.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: That's 41% of men compared to just 27% of women.
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: So already we're starting to hand different pieces of the
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: social and emotional work involved in dating, you know, figuring
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: out what somebody meant, deciding what to say next, finding
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: the right tone, how to flirt. Like men and women
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: are handing different pieces of that over to AI. And
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: so I guess that's, I don't know which one of
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: you asked this question, but I think it's a really
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: good one. If ChachiBT is helping a man communicate more
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: thoughtfully with a woman that he's dating, has it actually
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: helped him become a better communicator? Or has it allowed
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: him to outsource the performance of emotional competence to AI?
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: This is not a question I can answer, but like,
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: that is the question.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. That's what, when I'm talking about
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: those gradations, I completely understand using it, but there's a
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: certain level or line that I would feel that you're
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: just the person I'm communicating with is burnt out maybe
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: or not really connecting with me. And it's just using that.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: And I think if I had just... using that to
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: like not have to engage because it is such a slog.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: It is such a pain. It is such a job.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: But then if I realize that point and they start
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: to act differently or I start to see, oh, this
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: is not what I thought. You using AI wasn't reflecting
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: what you actually are or how you actually present, then
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: I think I would feel uncomfortable.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I saw this screen, speaking of people putting screenshots
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: of their dating app on social media, this one I
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: actually did find interesting. Somebody showed a screenshot where they
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: were talking to a guy on Tinder. And it's clear
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: to me immediately in the way that sometimes it's just
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: obvious that he's using ChatGPT, right? But the responses that
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: are being generated by ChatGPT They're good. They're funny. They're sarcastic.
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: They're like what you would want someone to say that
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: you were dating. And importantly, they were well-typed and grammatically correct.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: And then.
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: She texts him and the response that she gets, it's
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: like Jeffrey Epstein wrote it. It's like he's using the
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: letter U instead of Y-O-U when everything is misspelled. And
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: clearly it's like, okay, you were using ChatGPT to come
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: up with these, you know, good sounding replies. You stopped
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: doing that and now you're typing like a 13 year old.
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: That would be such a problem for me because it
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: is a pet peeve of mine personally, somebody who is
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: not a good like typer or texter and they can't spell.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: And it's like, am I trying to date a teenager?
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: Like what's going on? And so I think that I
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: am a.
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: Person of words. Communicating in words is important to me.
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: I would never be able to date somebody who was
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: not good at using their words. That's incredibly important to me.
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: So somebody using AI to outsource this thing that is
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: actually personally quite important to me would be a problem.
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: And that would be deceptive to me. I think there's
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: a question of like, whether or not that knowing that
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: somebody was using AI to do these things would change
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: how you experience these interactions.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, it's like that's the ultimate question.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Well, so what are your thoughts on this question?
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: It's not a question I can really answer. I think
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: it depends. It's like your mileage may vary. I did again,
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: I did a very unscientific poll of my single friends.
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: And one of them gave me an answer that I
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: found really interesting. He was like, well, you know, we've
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: always outsourced dating.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: To other people other than ourselves.
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: You know, how many times have you shown a picture
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: of a date to a friend to be like, oh,
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: are they cute?
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: Should I date them?
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: Or shown a text to a friend and said like,
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: what are they trying to say with this text? Or
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: had a friend redo your dating app profile?
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: Like, we have kind of.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: Always outsourced some aspects of dating to other people. So
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: getting outside assistance with dating is not a new thing.
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: And again, I can understand the argument being made that
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: AI might genuinely be able to help people communicate better.
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: Somebody's got social anxiety. They might use it to organize
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: their thoughts. Somebody dating in a language that they're not
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: fluent in might use it to communicate more clearly. Somebody
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: who struggles to express their emotions might might use AI
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: to like sort out what they want to say and
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: make sure the tone is right. So I don't think
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: that it can be as black and white as the
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: dividing line is as soon as you use AI, that
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: is fake and inherently deceptive. I think the better question
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: is probably a little bit messier and blurrier, which is like,
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: at what point does it go from assistance to substitution, right?
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: If AI is helping you better phrase something you already
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: wanted to say, maybe that's one thing. But if AI
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: is determining what you should feel, what you should say,
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: how you should present to another person, that seems to
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: be another thing. And so I think Thinking of it
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: as a spectrum as opposed to like a black and
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: white thing might be useful. But I guess the bottom
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: line is it really feels like we're kind of inventing
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: these norms, these new norms in dating in real time.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that I think about
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: with the deception question, because we had an episode talking
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: about how a lot of conservative men have been lying
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: on dating sites to get liberal women for really, like, why?
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Everybody's kind of like, why are you doing this? Because
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: women have giant markers, myself as well. If you say
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: you are moderate, which was as like, like, that's an
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: obvious lie. Like, you feel like you're central, then... there's
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: a problem here. Like women have taken that standard and
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: being like, you are no longer someone I would consider dating.
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: And to the point that conservative men have like changed
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: it altogether and either don't answer the question, which is
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: still a red flag or lie outright lie and say
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: they are. And then like date three or four, they're like,
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: just kidding. I'm a Trumper type of conversation for women
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: who think this is a very big red flag. And
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: so this kind of gets to the point of like
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: when we were talking that this does pose a risk
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: to us where we feel like this is beyond just lying, right?
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: Yes, very good point.
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: You know, online dating has always required a certain amount
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: of trust. And that is particularly true for women who
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: date men. You know, asking yourself, is this person really
• 44:50
  Speaker 4: who they say they are? Are these pictures recent? Is
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: this person safe? Is this person trying to meet me
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: or date me or have sex with me for, you know,
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: bad intent? Women already have to perform tremendous amounts of
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: safety work just to show up in online dating. Sending
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: your friend your location, meeting in public, Googling somebody, making
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: sure you have your own way home, making sure you
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: bring your own money, all of that. Adding AI to
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: the mix as another layer to already this like very
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: uncertain dynamic because it becomes increasingly easy to lie to people,
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: to generate fake pictures, fake voices, fake identities that don't
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: correspond to a real person. And this is a little
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: bit of a tangent, but did y'all see that thing?
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: earlier this week about that fake San Francisco 49ers player. No.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which, by the way, is not funny. Not funny
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: to the women. But some of the women that have
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: published the things have been kind of.
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: I'm saying it is funny. I don't want.
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: I'm sad the women got scammed and I hope they
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: get their justice. But, like, I've been watching the videos
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: this guy put out that was like, this is my
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: football training video.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: Those are funny. So for folks who don't know, this guy,
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: a scammer, allegedly.
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: He was pretending to be super wealthy, meeting women on
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: dating apps and purporting to be a professional football player
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: for the San Francisco 49ers. How he accomplished this, I
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: will say this, in an era of AI, I almost
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: have to give him like a weird kudos because it's like,
• 46:19
  Speaker 4: he could have just used AI to like, come up
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: with fake photos. This guy went out and bought a
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: fake 49ers helmet and was like staging fake photos at
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: the beach. So I'm like, okay, you did put a
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: little bit of more effort into this than just like
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: doing it on AI. Oh, and then the scam was
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: he would meet these women on dating apps and then
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: purport to be very wealthy, dangle this kind of NFL
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: wife lifestyle in front of them. And then say, you know,
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: I don't want to have to give somebody a free ride,
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: invest in my company so I know that you're the
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: kind of woman that I want to be with. And
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: he scammed women to the tune, allegedly, to the tune
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: of $ 1. 3 million on these scam investments. And what's so
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: interesting is the way that AI showed up in this scam.
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: when you would Google this dude, you know, the AI
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: Google overview that you see, it actually would say that
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: he was a San Francisco 49ers player. But the reason
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: for that is that on his social media pages, his
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: Instagram pages, he would say, player for the San Francisco 49ers,
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: Google AI overview, it just indexes from publicly available information.
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: And so Google AI overview was just pulling from information
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: that he had already put on the internet. So when
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: you Googled him, really the Google overview would say NFL player. Now,
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: if you went to the official roster, which it sounded
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: like these women weren't doing, he would not be listed.
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: Like if you did a little more investigation, but it's
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: weird because people should not be trusting the Google AI overview.
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: This is a great example as to why they shouldn't
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: be trusting that. But like, I can see if you
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: Google it and you're like, okay, Google says that he's
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: actually an NFL player because he gamified the Google AI overview.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: And his friend did something too, right? He had a
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: friend who helped in his scheme and the friend also schemed.
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: Yes, he had a... It's such a rabbit hole. He
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: had like fake signing where it's like.
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: oh, you're signing your NFL contract.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: Who are you signing with?
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: The video of him with his friend signing the fake
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: NFL paperwork for him to join the team. Someone was like,
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: I guess no woman has ever watched the NFL draft signing.
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: And I'm like, okay, I definitely have never watched that.
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: What a woman I would watch that. But even still,
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: I'm like, this doesn't, I don't think it happens in
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: like a one bedroom apartment. You know what I mean? Like,
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: I've never watched this. Even I feel like I would
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: have known something was up.
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: Right. And not to disparage, because this is younger than me,
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: but NFL usually doesn't go to a 32-year-old and be like, hey,
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: you are definitely primetime. We need you bad.
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: You are, like, nearing retirement at 32. So why would
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: they be signing a 32-year-old? Also, again, I don't want
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: to say too much.
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: I want to say this. Look up the guy.
• 48:57
  Speaker 4: Because if you've ever seen a professional, not even a
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: professional football player, any kind of, like, he doesn't even
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: look like he plays JV. Like, he doesn't even look
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: like somebody who, like, goes to the gym.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: Like.
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: And he has these, I'm really going on a tangent now,
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: but he has these videos of him doing fake NFL drills.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: And they're like him skipping down the road. And it's like,
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: I mean, I guess part of it is, you know,
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: It's why romance scams work is because he is selling
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: a very desirable lifestyle, especially right now when everything is
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: so hard. Everything is so expensive. Everybody's working a lot,
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: especially for women. I can understand why somebody comes along
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: and they're like, I want to make you an NFL wife.
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: I want to make it so you never have to
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: work again. I drive an expensive car. I live an
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: expensive lifestyle. I can invite you in on that. I
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: saw a lot of people saying, like, if this guy's
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: so rich, why was he asking these.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: Women for money?
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: And that's actually wrong because he wasn't asking them for money.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: He was saying, I want you to prove that you
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: are also like a hustle-minded, high-value woman by investing in
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: my buddy's scam company. So I don't want to victim
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: blame because I can see why that is enticing. And
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: that's why romance scams are effective. When you add in AI,
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: it just becomes so easy to scale.
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And that's the thing is with this technology, scammers can
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: just engage in so many, like I going back to
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: your point, I don't know why this daffodil thing has
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: really stuck with me, but like having a detail that
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: the AI will remember, like keeping up with conversations for scammers,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: making these personalized conversations, having AI makes it so that
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: they can really broaden how many people are scamming.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: A scammer who maybe earlier had to personally maintain conversation
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: with several targets can now do that with AI to
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: maintain more convincing, personalized conversations. You can personalize if there's
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: a particular thing that might make you vulnerable to a scam.
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: AI can personalize that for whatever your particular soft spot
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: or vulnerability is. And then it becomes potentially more dangerous
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: because AI can really make that scalable. So when these
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: dating companies are telling us AI is going to make
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: dating easier, there is a parallel question that I feel
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: like they also have to answer, which is that if
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: that's the case, how are you going to make sure
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: that AI then doesn't make it harder for people to
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: know who they're actually talking to, to know that they're
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: actually talking to the person that they say they're talking to? Like,
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: where is that line and what are these companies who
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: are selling us the stream of AI, what are they
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: doing to also answer that very important question as well?
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, that is an excellent question. And I think that
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: throughout this episode, we've made it clear the dating world
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: is not doing well, to say the least. This technology,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, has not been helping. Does
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: this mean everybody should delete technology? their dating apps?
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: Not necessarily.
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: I understand this conversation has been a lot of doom
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: and gloom, but I do think there's another possibility for
• 52:05
  Speaker 4: what technology can do when it comes to connection and dating.
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: Even April Williams, that.
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: Sociologist I told you about who wrote Not My Type
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: about the biases in dating apps, even she does not
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: think that people should just abandon dating apps. And in fact,
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: she met her husband on Tinder. And it's kind of
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: a cute story. They lived less than a mile away
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: from each other. You know, she had apparently been to
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: the bakery where he worked. They probably had crossed paths
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: in real life without even knowing it, but he was
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: pretty introverted. And so they had these different lives where
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: they might not have ever actually even met or even
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: crossed paths without technology putting them in front of each other.
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: When they did meet, she said that she had laughed
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: with him in this way that she had never experienced
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: with a man before. And I feel like her story
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: kind of gets at the promise of technology that I
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: personally don't want to just like abandon, right? That technology
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: can introduce us to people that we never would have encountered.
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: It can bridge social, cultural, and geographic divides. But I
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: think ultimately it is not about, you know, should technology
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: be involved in our dating and our romance and our
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: intimate lives? Because it clearly already is. The question we
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: should be asking is, If we accept that technology is
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: going to be in our intimate lives, what do we
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: want that technology to do? Do we want it to
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: be expanding the range of people that we might encounter
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: and expanding the range of having kind of healthy connections?
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: Or do we want it to be merely taking these
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: existing hierarchies of desirability and making those hierarchies.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: More efficient and more stark?
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: You know, when I was first reporting my audio book
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: about all of this, Love at First Prompt, AI and
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: the Future of Intimacy, I spent a lot of time
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: with folks who had developed intimate relationships with AI. And
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: I think that there is this tendency to treat those
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: relationships as categorically very different from the stuff the rest
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: of us normal folks are doing, right?
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: The rest of us normies. You know, over here, there
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: are people having relationships with humans.
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: And then way over there are people falling in love
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: and having sex with chatbots. But increasingly from reporting the book,
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: I don't think that line is as clear as maybe
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: it's sometimes seen. And what I've come to really see
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: is that there's another version of that question that I
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: think impacts a much larger group of us, which is
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: what happens to relationships when people as machines become increasingly
• 54:21
  Speaker 4: involved in how these relationships begin, develop, and function? And
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: I think that's really got to be the kind of
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: conversation we're having, not the conversation that is like, Anybody
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: who experiences intimacy with AI is weird and crazy because
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: when you take a step back and look at the
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: larger landscape of online dating, that's kind of a lot
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: of people already.
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: And as we've been talking about in our conversations with you, Bridget,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: the technology is just moving so fast. So it feels
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: like we're not keeping up with it necessarily. But I
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: do think that, I mean, clearly, Samantha, in the beginning,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: you had kind of that moment. I think people... listen
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: to something like this, you realize how much technology and
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: AI is involved in your relationships and intimacy. And that
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: can be kind of a jarring realization. And then just
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: the knowledge as always that these companies who have people
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: leading them that you might not want to have this
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: information are running these platforms. It is just a lot
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: of questions I think that we have to answer.
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: There was a thing a while back where Tinder had
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: this tier that was like $ 1, 000, very expensive. And basically
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: what you would get for that tier was like more
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: AI matches. I do think that we have this dynamic
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: that is so extractive, that is so focused on what
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: we as the user or the people are willing to
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: give and pay and give up. And on the other
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: side of that equation is not really hearing a lot
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: about what these companies are willing to provide or protect.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much as always, Bridget, for bringing
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: these topics to us, for explaining these complicated issues. We
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: love having you on. Where can the good listeners find you?
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: Well, you can check out my audio book, Love at
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: First Prompt, AI and the Future of Intimacy. You can
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: check it out at loveatfirstprompt.com. You can check me out
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: on Instagram at BridgetMarieNDC and check out my podcast, There
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: Are No Girls on the Internet.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: And listeners, please go do all of that if you
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: have not already. If you would like to contact us,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: you can. Our email is hello at stuffonevertoldyou.com. We're also
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: on BlueSkype, MomStuffPodcast. We're on Instagram and TikTok at stuffonevertoldyou.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: We're also on YouTube. We have some merchandise at the
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Comp Bureau. And we have a book you can get
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to our
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: super producer, Rima, and our executive producer, Maya.
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Thanks to you for listening. Stuff One Never Told You
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
• 56:49
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• 56:51
  Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.