Matchmaker, Matchmaker

A recent Atlantic article offers a different perspective on dating app problems, but these conditions suggest something more significant.

This article by Olga Khazan shifts the dating app discussion from its products to its approach. Central to such challenges Khazan suggests is the reduction in socializing, especially in “mixed-gender, non-dating” situations.

Dating apps as Khazan describes allow users to filter for hight for example in ways that might make the process more efficient. Such preferences however can be supplanted by other, and more appealing attributes, such as poise under pressure or kindness to strangers, that often and sometimes only appear in repeated interactions over time.

These apps might make looking for love more efficient, but that encourages users to expect perfection as Khazan explains and reduces these experiences to chemistry with strangers rather than affection that arises with context. The more important issue I believe is that these digital matchmakers are no match for human experience.

Human analogues obviously aren’t perfect. Some arrangements whether marriages or something less legal don’t succeed for any substantial time.

This imperfection however is essential. Human relationships more generally not only consist of but also depend upon imperfect experiences, which can be gateways to bigger benefits and more satisfaction.

I’m not suggesting that dating challenges, which others have documented and discussed, can be completely explained by digital difficulties. I do think these conditions though cannot be disentangled from the digital devices and platform technologies that have catalyzed, or at least contributed to, these.

Efficiency more importantly isn’t always an unalloyed good. Not everything is or should or even can be an engineering problem.

Apps and algorithms in other words cannot completely replace human experience and expertise. Some areas of human existence in still other words must be protected from the intrusion of digital technologies, including AI.

And that is something worth remembering for all of us whether we dating or not as we consider first principles for incorporating these technologies, including AI, into our lives.