A.I. Accelerates in Paris + Can A.I. Fix Your Love Life?

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Speaker 14 Well, big Valentine's Day show today, Kevin. Yeah.
Happy Valentine's Day.

Speaker 15 Happy Valentine's Day.

Speaker 14 Are you a Valentine's Day person?

Speaker 15 So, my wife and I do celebrate Valentine's Day, but we celebrate it a day early because if you go out to the restaurants on Valentine's Day, it's a disaster. It's too crowded.

Speaker 15 They give you these little crappy prefix menus. It's not a good scene.

Speaker 15 So we are going out on Thursday.

Speaker 14 That makes a a lot of sense. And you've done this for years now.
Yes. And do you tell the servers that you're sort of sneaking in a little early for Valentine's?

Speaker 15 No, but I don't think we're the only people who have figured this out because the restaurants have become crowded the day before Valentine's Day, too. There must have been a memo.
What about you?

Speaker 15 Are you celebrating Valentine's Day?

Speaker 14 So here's the thing. On paper, you would think that I would not be that into Valentine's.
Oh, another commercial holiday designed to get me to, you know, buy a card at Walgreens, whatever.

Speaker 14 Who needs that? I am throwing myself into Valentine's Day with a fervor that is frankly shocking even to myself.

Speaker 15 Tell me about it.

Speaker 14 I've bought decorations for my house on Valentine's Day. Some of them are battery operated.

Speaker 15 That's how into this I'm getting.

Speaker 14 I think it's going to be so much fun. Wow.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 You are such a wife guy now.

Speaker 14 I have become an absolute trad wife for my boyfriend.

Speaker 15 You have gone from being very cynical about romance to being the most romantic person I know.

Speaker 14 Do you know the Kelly Clarkson song, Miss Independent? Because it's about exactly this.

Speaker 14 It's about a sort of independent young woman who, you know, thinks she can make it in the world on her own and then, oops, she falls in love and then everything changes.

Speaker 14 So I'm looking forward to a great Valentine's Day.

Speaker 15 Well, I'm excited for you.

Speaker 14 Thank you. Me too.

Speaker 15 I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist of the New York Times. I'm Casey Newton from Platformer.
And this is Hard Fork.

Speaker 14 This week, Kevin reports back from the Paris AI Action Summit, where there was a conspicuous lack of action.

Speaker 14 Then, this Valentine's Day, we're using AI to spiff up one of our producers' dating profiles. And finally, Hinge CEO Justin McLeod joins us to discuss what AI can do to help us find true love.

Speaker 14 You know, I'd settle for a decent co-host.

Speaker 15 Hey, now, I'm sitting right here.

Speaker 14 Well, Kevin, like the Statue of Liberty, you've just returned to us from France.

Speaker 15 Yes, or we.

Speaker 14 Yeah, you're fully bilingual now that you've spent three days in Paris.

Speaker 15 What were you doing over there? Well, I was attending the big AI action summit. It was held in Paris this week, and it was a giant confab of industry leaders.

Speaker 15 government leaders, people from academia and NGOs, just basically a whole bunch of very important AI figures were there.

Speaker 15 Dario Amade from Anthropic, Demis Asabas from Google DeepMinds, Sam Altman from OpenAI, the sort of heads of the three biggest AI labs in America were there, as were a bunch of people from big AI companies all over the world.

Speaker 14 Yeah. Now, this was the third in a series of summits like this that we've seen over the past couple of years.
Is that right?

Speaker 15 Yeah. So the first two of these summits that were held in the UK and in South Korea were more explicitly focused on AI safety.

Speaker 15 In fact, the first one in the UK at Bletchley Park was called the AI Safety Summit. But this one was very much not about that, or at least not in the official portion of the summit program.

Speaker 15 It was called the AI Action Summit. And a lot of the program was about the opportunities that AI would create, not the risks it could pose.

Speaker 14 And is that because at the first two summits, they were able to solve the problem of AI safety once and for all?

Speaker 15 No, I mean.

Speaker 15 There's a lot to talk about. I think this was a very big summit in terms of what it means for the future of AI.
But before we talk about it, because we're talking about AI, let's roll our disclosures.

Speaker 15 That's right. I'll start.

Speaker 14 Kevin, my boyfriend works at Anthropic.

Speaker 15 And I work for the New York Times, which is currently suing Open AI and Microsoft over alleged copyright violations related to the training of large language models.

Speaker 14 So, what was the vibe at this conference? What were some of the big sort of headline takeaways that the people who organized it wanted us to have?

Speaker 15 Well, so maybe let's set the scene a little bit first. So, you get to Paris and you have some choices.

Speaker 15 You can either go to the main summit, which is held in the Grand Palais, which is this giant exposition hall

Speaker 15 in the center of Paris, or you can go to these side events that are happening sort of a couple days before and a couple days after the main event. Is that at the Petit Chateau?

Speaker 15 No.

Speaker 15 These are sort of events that are being held all over Paris. Many of them have more specific, like there was one about AI security or it was one about AI safety.

Speaker 15 So these sort of events that are sprinkled throughout Paris, but are not themselves the main summit. And so, I did a little bit of both.
I went to some of the side events.

Speaker 15 I went to the main event on the first day of the summit at the Palais. And, you know, in the actual summit in the Palais, you'd walk around in the kind of main floor and you'd see these exhibits.

Speaker 15 And it's things like how to use AI to preserve

Speaker 15 languages that are, you know, maybe going to die out, or how to use AI to improve government benefits and welfare, or how to use AI to. Wait, Doge was there?

Speaker 15 Doge was not there. But these were other more European approaches to the same idea.
Or how to use AI for things like climate change and disaster relief.

Speaker 15 So, sort of how all the ways that AI could help people, that was what they wanted to spotlight.

Speaker 14 Got it.

Speaker 14 And my understanding is also that President Macron of France also really used this opportunity to cheerlead for homegrown French companies and to sort of separate himself from the rest of Europe, which I think he cast as maybe a little bit overly enthusiastic about regulation.

Speaker 15 Yeah, so President Macron definitely wanted to talk up France's entry into the AI race, the fact that they were not just going to let America and China dictate the future of this technology.

Speaker 15 He announced a huge new round of investments in the French AI ecosystem. He also was promoting Mistral, which is sort of of France's leading AI company.

Speaker 15 And he was very much interested in sending the message that unlike the rest of the European countries, which want to regulate AI, he wants to kind of accelerate and move France into the category of AI leadership.

Speaker 14 And this was a message that was very much echoed by Vice President J.D. Vance, right, who gave one of his first major speeches since taking off.
office. And Kevin, what did J.D.
Vance have to say?

Speaker 15 So J.D.

Speaker 15 Vance showed up on the second day of the summit and gave a big speech in which he basically outlined an America-first AI agenda, where he said, you know, we are not going to spend our time in America worrying about the risks of AI or trying to keep people safe from it.

Speaker 15 Instead, we are going to accelerate. We are going to remove all of the guardrails and restrictions because we want to get to advanced AI fast.

Speaker 15 Did you bring a clip? Yes, let's play a clip from his talk.

Speaker 16 I'm not here this morning to talk about AI safety, which was the title of the conference a couple of years ago. I'm here to talk about AI opportunity.

Speaker 16 When conferences like this convene to discuss a cutting-edge technology, oftentimes I think our response is to be too self-conscious, too risk-averse.

Speaker 16 But never have I encountered a breakthrough in tech that so clearly calls us to do precisely the opposite. The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety.

Speaker 16 It will be won by building.

Speaker 15 So that was the message from JD Vance was that worrying about AI safety is out and worrying about AI opportunity is in.

Speaker 14 Now, how was this message received by other people in Le Grand Palais?

Speaker 15 So there were a lot of people there who were happy to hear this.

Speaker 15 Some of the startup founders and other people who want to accelerate AI and who think that the doomers have been, you know, spreading these exaggerated exaggerated fears that they don't agree with.

Speaker 15 But there were also a lot of safety-minded people in attendance at this summit who saw this as a huge mistake, a missed opportunity. And actually, some of the AI leaders themselves

Speaker 15 disagreed with the kind of vision that J.D. Vance laid out.
Dario Amade, the CEO of Anthropic, wrote a statement in response to the summit just saying, like,

Speaker 15 we have to look at the risks. You all don't understand like how quickly advanced AI is coming and the risks that it could pose.
And so we can't actually just ignore all of that. Yeah.

Speaker 14 Well, Kevin, I have to ask, what we think happened between the first two of these summits where people seemed quite focused on the fact that powerful AI will, for example, be able to help people create novel biological, chemical, nuclear weapons, launch cyber attacks, spread hate speech, propaganda, misinformation, you name it, to the Paris summit where we said, you know what, do we have to keep talking about that all the time?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean, I think a few things happened. The most obvious is the election of Donald Trump.

Speaker 15 Kamala Harris attended a previous AI safety summit and expressed some sympathy for the views of the people who are worried about things like existential risk from AI.

Speaker 15 The Biden White House obviously put together its executive order on AI, but Donald Trump is being influenced by a different set of people.

Speaker 15 He has among his inner circle people like Mark Andreessen, who is kind of an AI accelerationist.

Speaker 15 Others in his orbit also believe that the safety crowd is just a bunch of irrational doomers who, you know, are spreading these hyped up fears about this technology.

Speaker 15 And so I think the biggest factor is just that Donald Trump was elected and now his people are setting America's AI policy and not the Biden people.

Speaker 14 Here's what I don't understand about this. Like, I think J.D.
Vance believes that the United States is currently winning in the,

Speaker 14 if you want to call it a competition to build very powerful AI before anyone else. And that everyone in his ear is sort of saying that, yeah, like we have a clear pathway to super intelligence.

Speaker 14 What I don't know, and I would love to find out is what does J.D. Vance thinks happens after one of these labs creates super intelligence, right?

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's a really baffling piece of this is that it seems like the accelerationists, the people who just want to take off all all the guardrails and remove all the regulations and just like go full speed ahead to AGI.

Speaker 15 It seems like they don't actually believe in AGI, or at least they don't have a real clear vision of what the world will look like after it.

Speaker 15 It's a kind of techno-pessimism that's sort of masquerading as optimism.

Speaker 15 It's like we don't actually think the people at the labs who are building this stuff or the people who are the pioneers in deep learning who are warning about these existential risks, like we don't actually think they're right, but we're not going to say why.

Speaker 15 We're just kind of going to kind of like pretend it doesn't exist.

Speaker 14 Yeah, I wrote a column this week, and the headline was: America's new AI safety plan is let's see what happens.

Speaker 14 Because, as far as I could tell, that's what it is. We're going to just create systems that are ever more powerful.

Speaker 14 And the Trump administration is signaling they do not intend to regulate them in any meaningful way.

Speaker 15 Yeah, and I think this was, to me, the thing that I felt at the summit was a sense of just two

Speaker 15 sort of parallel conversations happening that have almost no points of overlap.

Speaker 15 One is the conversation that the people who are running the big AI labs and the people who are deep in the technical details of the AI itself are having, which is about the fact that we are rapidly approaching smarter than human AI systems.

Speaker 15 You know, a lot of people that we've had on the show who are running these big companies say that we could be only a year or two or possibly three years away from AGI or something like AGI.

Speaker 15 And then you have this other conversation, which seems to be operating on a totally different time scale, which is like, let's start a blue ribbon commission to plan for how workers can adapt to AI.

Speaker 15 And maybe we're going to release a report in a couple of years.

Speaker 15 I don't know what to do about reconciling those two views, but it does seem very striking that the people who are the closest to the technology, who know the trajectory that these things are on, are sounding the alarm and saying like you all need to feel much more urgent about this and then the politicians who just sort of are doing i would say like a more um traditional read of ai uh just basically being another technology yeah there was this fascinating story that i saw in the wall street journal by bell lin and it found that the unemployment rate in the information technology sector rose from 3.9 percent in december to 5.7 percent in january which is way above the overall jobless rate of 4%.

Speaker 14 Why is that interesting? Well, some of the economists that Bell writes about in this piece believe that this is the first sign that AI automation is starting to cause significant job loss.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I mean, this is something that I've been interested in too, because I think we've all been waiting for signs that the AI gains of the past few years, the progress and the capabilities that are improving are actually translating into changes for workers.

Speaker 15 And I do think that the first place this is showing up is in software.

Speaker 15 I think, you know, I've met founders who tell me that they are no longer needing to hire junior software engineers because now a senior engineer with an AI tool can do much more work, work that might have previously required three or four people under them to do.

Speaker 14 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 14 So I think this is important to bring up because while, you know, I am a person who likes to write about AI safety because I think that it is something that people should take seriously.

Speaker 14 For me, AI safety is kind of a proxy for just all of the disruptions that AI is going to cause in general, which I think that generally politicians and regulators pay too little attention to.

Speaker 14 And I have to tell you, there are very few things more destabilizing to the politics of any country than huge unemployment numbers.

Speaker 14 And so if we're already starting to see those creep into the picture, then I think it is a strategic mistake for folks like J.D.

Speaker 14 Vance to stand at a podium and say, we're not going to worry about any of this. It's just going to be go, go, go to the finish line.

Speaker 14 Because in truth, there might be actually a huge political problem that is bubbling up under their nose. Yeah.

Speaker 15 And J.D. Vance said explicitly in his speech that he doesn't believe AI will replace workers.

Speaker 15 It will only help them, which, you know, is a fine thing to believe, but it is at odds with what the people who are building this technology have said.

Speaker 15 I mean, Sam Altman has said that they are building drop-in workers that you could just sort of hire at your company.

Speaker 15 Many, many AI leaders have said that they they do expect AI to create substantial job displacement in the coming years. And so I think if you're J.D.

Speaker 15 Vance or someone who's on his side of this, you actually have to do more than just say, no, it won't. Like

Speaker 15 you have to actually explain why you believe that the people who worry about AI creating job loss are being irrational. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 14 Let me throw one more statistic at you. So this week, Anthropic put out this new economic index where they're publishing a lot lot of data about the impact of AI on the economy as we know it so far.

Speaker 14 And one of the things that they found is that right now, AI use leans more toward augmentation of what a human being can do than replacing them outright.

Speaker 14 But maybe not by as big a margin as you might think.

Speaker 14 What they found is that about 57% of the AI use that they are seeing in their own tools is augmentation of what humans can do, but 43% is automation. So let's assume that number goes up over time.

Speaker 14 This stuff is going to get real in a hurry.

Speaker 15 Yeah. So I think the jobs area is one where the sort of JD Vance vision of this is all going to be great.

Speaker 15 And if you're saying otherwise, you're just like a pessimistic doomer is going to clash with observable reality.

Speaker 15 But I also, I had a conversation with an AI safety person at the summit who was just sort of making the point that taking these extreme risks seriously is a prerequisite for acceleration.

Speaker 15 It is not actually opposed to acceleration. And the example that he used from historical analogs was nuclear power.

Speaker 15 So we had nuclear power in the 20th century and then Chernobyl happened and Three Mile Island happened. And it really delayed the popularization of nuclear energy by several decades.

Speaker 15 It's only recently that countries have started to build new nuclear power plants. And it's not actually because

Speaker 15 they took the risks of nuclear power too seriously. It's because the people who are engineering the plants during the first wave of nuclear power didn't make them safe enough.

Speaker 15 And so the analogy that this person was drawing to AI is like, if you want to accelerate this technology, if you want to allow it to move as quickly as possible, then you actually have to think about safety.

Speaker 15 Because if you don't, then something catastrophic is going to happen. And when that catastrophic thing happens, people are going to react very strongly to that.

Speaker 15 And you end up delaying this technology more than it would have been delayed if you had just taken safety more seriously in the first place. So what do you make of that analogy?

Speaker 14 I think it is such an important point. And it is something that I wish the folks who are so dead set on acceleration would pay attention to.

Speaker 15 One more thing happened in Paris that was notable, which is that there was this big dinner with the heads of state and the leaders of the AI companies.

Speaker 15 And at that dinner, while Sam Altman was sitting next to JD Vance, the news came in that Elon Musk was proposing to acquire the nonprofit of OpenAI

Speaker 15 for something like $97.4 billion.

Speaker 14 Yes, and this appears to be a trademark piece of legal trolling by Musk and his allies. Open AI is, of course, in the midst of trying to convert itself into a for-profit.

Speaker 14 And in order to do that, the non-profit has to get a fair price for the assets of the for-profit. And this bit of trolling from Musk could make that more complicated.

Speaker 15 Yeah, this is all very complicated. We'll get into it probably in a future episode.

Speaker 15 I imagine that this is not the last time we'll talk about this OpenAI restructuring and some of the challenges there.

Speaker 15 But suffice to say, Elon Musk did not like the idea of an AI summit happening in Paris without him. And so he figured out a way to insert himself into the conversation.

Speaker 14 It's amazing Elon Musk had time to do that in the midst of dismantling the entire federal government.

Speaker 14 Now, Kevin, often at these summits, some sort of declaration comes out that tries to signal some spirit of collaboration. Here are some things we're going to work on together.

Speaker 14 And how did the United States feel about the declaration that came out of this summit?

Speaker 15 Well, not great is the short answer. So there was a draft that was leaked before the actual final version of this statement went around.
It was pretty watered down already.

Speaker 15 It did not talk a lot about risks and harms that might result from AI.

Speaker 15 But the U.S.

Speaker 15 wouldn't even agree to sign that statement, possibly due to some language in there about making sure that AI was inclusive, which I imagine to the people in the Trump administration, that just sounded a little too woke for them.

Speaker 15 So the U.S. did not sign this.
The UK also did not sign this. And I would say that most of the people who looked at this statement thought it was lacking in one way or another.
Yeah.

Speaker 14 Well, love the idea of a summit that produces a completely anodyne statement that commits nobody to anything that is still considered too restrictive for global superpowers to sign.

Speaker 15 Yeah. China signed it.

Speaker 14 They did. That was nice.
So

Speaker 15 I was thinking on the plane ride back from Paris about sort of what I would take away from this summit.

Speaker 14 Number one, a whole bunch of croissants.

Speaker 15 Number two,

Speaker 15 I did bring back one pastry for my wife. Smart.
Although it got crushed in my luggage. Oh, no.
Zacreble. The Zacre Bleu.

Speaker 15 So I think the major takeaway at the sort of biggest possible level is that we are just not going to see the kind of international AI safety cooperation that I think a lot of people had hoped for.

Speaker 15 You know, there was this idea that there would be sort of a new United Nations type structure that would sort of emerge where governments all over the world would see it in their common interest to cooperate in making rules to govern the AI systems that were becoming increasingly powerful.

Speaker 15 I do not think that is going to happen after going to this summit. I think that countries are going to take a much more nationalistic approach to this.
They will want to win.

Speaker 15 They will not want to cooperate for the most part.

Speaker 15 I think that I also realized that in the United States, during the Trump administration, we are not going to get any meaningful AI safety regulations at the federal level.

Speaker 15 There may be some stuff happening at the state level, but I think we have pretty clearly seen J.D.

Speaker 15 Vance signal that the administration's position is kind of the all-gas, no breaks position when it comes to AI.

Speaker 14 So it sounds like it was more of an in-action summit.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it was kind of an action summit to say, we're not going to take any action.

Speaker 15 When we come back, we're going to talk about a different kind of AI action.

Speaker 15 AI might be helping you get some action on dating apps this Valentine's Day.

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Speaker 15 Well, Casey, this episode is coming out on Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day.

Speaker 14 Happy Valentine's Day, Kevin. Love is in the air, and today we want to talk about it.

Speaker 15 Yes, we have a Valentine's Day special. Today, we are going to talk specifically about dating apps.

Speaker 14 Kevin, I think that this conversation is coming at a perfect time for us because while on one hand, dating apps remain a very popular way for people of all ages to meet each other.

Speaker 14 They've also been going through a really hard time. If you go online, you find mounting frustrations from users who feel like dating apps are sort of finding more and more ways to charge them.

Speaker 14 And people feel like essentially, you're extracting more and more money from me. I'm going on fewer and fewer dates.
I have not found the love of my life. And something needs to change.

Speaker 14 So there's a lot of frustration out there.

Speaker 15 Yeah. And part of that may be that these apps are just not.
doing as good a job as they used to of getting people connected to their matches.

Speaker 15 But I think there's also this question of whether dating as a whole is less popular than it used to be.

Speaker 14 It could be, but what we know is that the CEOs of the dating apps are proposing a solution, Kevin.

Speaker 14 And it is the same solution that CEOs of every kind of app are proposing these days, which is they're going to sprinkle some AI on it. Yes.

Speaker 15 So today we're going to take a look at how AI is reshaping or not reshaping the world of dating.

Speaker 15 And we're going to do this in two parts.

Speaker 15 First, we are going to focus on where things stand with AI features on dating apps right now and what one power user of a dating app called Hinge is learning about the way that AI can both help and potentially hurt finding matches online.

Speaker 15 And in the second half, we're going to talk with Justin McLeod, who's the CEO of Hinge, about how he thinks AI will transform the experience of online dating.

Speaker 14 And by the end of all of that, Kevin, we hope to have found love, not just for our super user, but for all Americans. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 15 And maybe find it in a hopeless place.

Speaker 15 Well, let me say, dating apps more often than not do feel like hopeless places.

Speaker 14 So let's hope we can find some love there.

Speaker 15 So to start, we've invited on our resident dater on Hard Fork, our producer, Rachel Cohn. Rachel's credentials include being the only single person on our team,

Speaker 15 going on a lot of hinge dates,

Speaker 15 and being very open about her experiments with finding love.

Speaker 15 Crazy open. Yes.
She writes a great newsletter on Substack called Are You My Boyfriend? where she talks about her experiences in dating.

Speaker 15 And today she's going to tell us about what happened when she followed all of the advice of Hinge's new AI tool to tweak her profile and find more matches.

Speaker 14 Oh, let's find out how that went.

Speaker 15 Rachel Cohen, welcome to Hard Fork.

Speaker 22 Hey guys.

Speaker 14 Rachel, it's great to have you here.

Speaker 14 Let's talk about this experiment.

Speaker 15 You can't have you here. She produces the show.

Speaker 14 That's what I mean. It's great for her to be here with us talking to us.

Speaker 15 Yeah. It does feel really formal.
Yeah.

Speaker 14 It's fun to be in front of the mic for a change. So now, Rachel, back when I was doing online dating, I was mostly on Tinder.
But for this experiment, you've decided to use Hinge.

Speaker 14 Tell us about why you made that choice.

Speaker 22 Yeah. So Tinder is actually like the biggest app.
This is like has the largest number of users in terms of dating apps in the US and also globally. But Hinge is one of the fastest growing now.

Speaker 22 And, you know, for me, I'm 30, I'm in New York, I'm straight. Everyone that I know is on Hinge.

Speaker 15 Right. It's the cool kids dating app.

Speaker 22 Totally. The other thing that I think is like really relevant to what I'm going to tell you guys is Hinge has like really marketed itself very intentionally as a place for serious relationships.

Speaker 22 That's also really interesting in terms of thinking about how AI is going to be incorporated into the app because it seems the most potentially problematic for Hinge's brand identity, which is all about like meaningful human connection, to be infusing a bunch of AI into the platform.

Speaker 15 Got it. Got it.

Speaker 14 So it's one of the most popular, and maybe it has the most to lose with this pivot to AI.

Speaker 22 Yeah, I think that's fair.

Speaker 14 All right. So we've picked Hinge as our sort of experiment bed.
What was the experiment that you ran?

Speaker 22 Okay.

Speaker 22 So Match Group, which is the parent company that owns a bunch of dating apps, including Hinge, they had this big investor day back in December where CEOs from several of the different dating apps got up on a stage and talked about what the new AI tools were that they were going to roll out on the platforms.

Speaker 22 And Hinge talked up, you know, these two different kinds of big buckets of features that they were going to roll out. One is something that is not yet out that they would not give me access to.

Speaker 22 Apparently it's coming next month, which is using AI to kind of like better make matches, improving the algorithm in some way.

Speaker 22 The other tool or the other bucket of category that that they are working on is AI for what they're calling the struggling dater.

Speaker 14 Now, do you identify as a struggling dater?

Speaker 22 So that's a good question. I would say it depends what we mean by struggling.

Speaker 22 I'm struggling in the sense that I've been like really actively dating for two and a half years and I still haven't found the right person, but I'm not struggling in the sense that my issue is getting dates through Hinge.

Speaker 14 I see. Okay.
All right. So in some cases, struggling, in other cases, thriving.

Speaker 22 Some would say.

Speaker 15 Some would say. To put it in business terms, the top of the funnel is

Speaker 15 great.

Speaker 15 But it's the conversion.

Speaker 14 You got to convert.

Speaker 15 Yeah, you got to convert. That's right.

Speaker 14 And that's where AI rolls in. Is that right?

Speaker 22 Okay, well, so this is like sort of what's unclear to me. I'm going to be really curious what you guys think about this tool.

Speaker 22 But so the one tool that they allowed me to use and that everyone can actually use now, this is totally public. It came out a month ago, is called AI Prompt Feedback.

Speaker 22 So the whole point of this tool, very simple, they have some kind of AI model that is looking at your written responses on your dating profile and giving you feedback on those written responses so that you can improve what you have on your profile.

Speaker 15 So Rachel, I'm going to ask you to slow down because I met my wife back in the Stone Ages. We met like face-to-face

Speaker 15 like Neanderthals.

Speaker 15 And I have not spent time on dating apps as a result. So my understanding is that you have, you know, a profile that you fill out.

Speaker 15 It's got things on it, like your interests and where you went to school and what you do. Yes.

Speaker 15 And what you're saying is this is basically like an AI coach that will sort of look at your profile and tell you, like, this could be punched up. This could be funnier.

Speaker 15 Maybe don't say that thing about your body odor. Like,

Speaker 15 it sort of like goes through your profile and critiques it for you. Is that what I'm hearing?

Speaker 22 Yes. Okay.
So Hinge actually requires you, like in order to set up a profile, you have to choose from a preset number of sort of prompts. They have things like together we could.

Speaker 22 And then, you know, you fill it out.

Speaker 14 Yeah, can I tell you my favorite example?

Speaker 14 One of the classic Hinge prompts is I go crazy for.

Speaker 14 And one time

Speaker 14 I saw somebody on Twitter just post, I go crazy for food.

Speaker 14 And that really tells you a lot about the sort of median level of writing on these profiles, Kevin.

Speaker 15 Got it.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 14 So that's kind of the setup here. Kevin now understands what an online dating profile is.

Speaker 14 And the rest of us understand that Hinge has these prompts, you know, which can sort of show off your personality, but maybe the average ones are, you know, pretty, pretty flat, you know, pretty non-unique, maybe.

Speaker 14 So then along comes AI and there's a tool. And Rachel, you use this tool.
Okay, yeah.

Speaker 22 So I'm going to actually share a PowerPoint with you guys.

Speaker 15 Oh, good.

Speaker 22 But we'll talk through this for our listeners who are not tuning into our YouTube.

Speaker 15 Okay. Share.

Speaker 14 For the listener, we're now in a Google Slides presentation.

Speaker 15 Can I just say, this is is so, Rachel. This is so, it's very Rachel.

Speaker 14 Okay, so here

Speaker 14 we're about to look at Rachel's original written prompts before AI intervened.

Speaker 22 Oh, yes. Okay.
So before I tell you about what these written prompts are, I'm just going to tell you what kinds of responses this AI algorithm gives.

Speaker 22 Because even though it will give you very personalized, specific feedback, it actually only has three kind of like top line categories of notes it will give you.

Speaker 22 So the three categories are, it will either say great answer, which means like, you know, you don't need to change anything, you're doing a great job, try a small change, meaning, you know, make a little tweak, or go deeper, which I have interpreted to mean you really need to be more vulnerable.

Speaker 22 You are not sharing enough about yourself.

Speaker 14 Yeah, you need to look within yourself and find something more interesting about yourself.

Speaker 15 So it will never say go shallower, like you're oversharing, maybe take out that part about your childhood trauma.

Speaker 22 Yes, you are going to see it will never say go shallower. It really, really loves specificity.
Okay, let's go.

Speaker 15 Let's see.

Speaker 22 Okay, so these were like my original prompts. Miraculously, this is not planned.
I actually got all three kinds of feedback, which is very useful for this experiment.

Speaker 22 So I got one great answer, one try a small change, one go deeper. We can start on like great answer because that's the one I did not change.

Speaker 22 And that's here. So the prompt was my simple pleasures.
Do you guys want to read it?

Speaker 14 Yeah, so Rachel's simple pleasures would include writing down a funny piece of conversation she overheard on the subway, dancing a little bit on a run, and making incredibly average watercolor paintings.

Speaker 14 This is a great answer. Yeah.
It's fun, it's specific, it's a little self-deprecating. And if you're if you're using Hinge, you've never seen that answer before.

Speaker 15 Correct. Wow.

Speaker 14 Thank you.

Speaker 15 So that was that one the AI said, you killed it, no change, no notes.

Speaker 22 Yeah, and to exactly your point, it said it showcases your personality and invites fun conversation about art and humor.

Speaker 14 Okay, so that's a that's a great one. Let's take a look at a prompt where maybe we could use a small change.

Speaker 15 Okay, great.

Speaker 22 So here was my original one. I'm just going to read this one out to you.
So

Speaker 22 the prompt was my greatest strength. And my original answer was getting people to share stuff they normally wouldn't or shouldn't.

Speaker 22 This is very useful for my job, but sometimes gets me into trouble in my personal life. What do you guys think?

Speaker 15 I like it. It's a little dangerous.
It makes you sound like, you know, you're

Speaker 15 like Sherlock Holmes.

Speaker 14 I can see how maybe some people would

Speaker 14 sort of

Speaker 14 that might rub them the wrong way, right? Because like dating is a little bit vulnerable.

Speaker 14 And maybe they read that and they think, okay, if I'm going to go on a first date with Rachel, maybe this is going to feel a little bit like an interrogation. And I have, I have my walls up, you know?

Speaker 14 So I could see how maybe, you know, fewer people might be interested in that one.

Speaker 22 I think that's a totally fair point.

Speaker 22 I will say like my own thinking about this is sometimes when I'm creating my responses to prompts, I'm actually thinking about like not what is going to like appeal to everyone, but what is actually going to push certain people away, like the people who will not be compatible with me.

Speaker 22 But I think that that's a really good point. Interestingly, that is not the thing that the AI focused on.

Speaker 22 So the feedback I got from the AI was basically just that it wanted me to be more specific, to give a specific example about a conversation I had had or something that I learned about someone.

Speaker 22 So I was actually trying to be like, you know, test the AI a little bit here, be a little bit funny and see if it would, you know, tell me like this is not a good idea to give that kind of an example.

Speaker 22 So the way I tweaked it first is I said, my greatest strength, again, getting people to share stuff they normally wouldn't or shouldn't, like how much money they make or what they most regret in life.

Speaker 22 This makes me feel bonded to people. Like together, we share a secret.

Speaker 15 That's good. Well, maybe.

Speaker 14 I like the last one better.

Speaker 15 Really?

Speaker 14 Like, who wants to go into a first date being like, this woman is on a mission to get me to reveal my salary?

Speaker 15 Well, exactly.

Speaker 15 As she said, it's a mechanism to filter out people.

Speaker 15 If you're opposed to salary transparency, you're not going to enjoy going on a date with Rachel Cohn. I don't know.
That's just the filter that she's setting up.

Speaker 22 No, I'm with Casey on this. I think this is bad.
I was hoping the AI would say, like, listen, that's going to be off-putting to some people, but it did not.

Speaker 22 It just said, if you want to add more, consider sharing why you enjoyed these conversations or a specific example. It wants me to be more specific.

Speaker 22 So I updated it again. Also, mind you, you can see here if you're like looking, I have now hit the like I am three characters away from the limit.

Speaker 22 So it's very hard to satisfy the AI and also stay within the character count.

Speaker 22 So finally, here's the one that actually worked. This took me so long.
I was workstocking this at a dinner with friends. My friends are like racking their brains for like the kind of questions I ask.

Speaker 22 Also, like every time we would try something, I would run out of characters. Finally, I like sort of like broke the whole structure again.

Speaker 22 And I was like, okay, I'm really just going to tell one story.

Speaker 22 So this is what I ultimately ended up with. My greatest strength, getting people to share stuff they normally wouldn't or shouldn't.

Speaker 22 Like recently at a wedding, a stranger told me how much money he made and why he felt constrained in his relationship. It gave us a shared secret.

Speaker 14 How much money did he make?

Speaker 22 I cannot say that.

Speaker 14 Wow. Wow.
You turn the tables and all of a sudden she clams up.

Speaker 14 Okay. So this, now here, for reasons that remain unknown to me, we we have finally satisfied the AI and this is a great answer.

Speaker 22 Do you feel that way? Because I mean, I'm curious, do you think this is better than what I had originally?

Speaker 15 I

Speaker 15 no, no, because here's the thing.

Speaker 14 I don't read that and I think, oh, like now I understand something about Rachel. What I understand something about a stranger you met at a wedding.

Speaker 15 Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 22 Yeah. Do you feel that same way, Kevin?

Speaker 15 Yeah, I, well, I think it's a little better because it sort of conjures the image of you like going up to someone and getting a stranger to tell you their secrets and makes you think, but it still has the same issue, which is if I'm a person with a lot of secrets, I'm turned off by this.

Speaker 14 Here's how I would do it. I would do it more like my greatest strength is accidentally getting people to reveal things.
Like, for example, make it seem like people cannot wait to tell you.

Speaker 14 If it makes it seem like you're constantly prying for information, that's a turnoff. But if it's, I'm so sort of effervescent and bubbly

Speaker 14 and people can't wait to tell me their secrets, now I'm interested.

Speaker 22 That's actually, that's really smart. I feel like that's

Speaker 22 not totally the truth.

Speaker 22 That is definitely a more appealing way to sell myself to people.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 14 So we've managed to best the AI one time.

Speaker 15 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 14 Very interesting. Now let's look at the next one.

Speaker 22 All right. So this is the one that was like, go deeper.
So this is the one I needed apparently the most help with.

Speaker 22 And I was actually really surprised by this one because my original prompt was, I'm looking for, and I wrote, someone to read a book next to in bed. And let me tell you, this, that's cute.

Speaker 22 This crushes on Hinge. This, like, I get more responses on this than any of the other ones.

Speaker 22 So many men will send me just like a hard eyes emoji or, you know, people will say, like, what book are you reading?

Speaker 22 You know, just to state the obvious here, I think part of like what's great about this response.

Speaker 15 It's also aspirational because in reality, what you're going to do with the people that you're dating is watch TikToks and bed next to them.

Speaker 14 Stop it. Rachel, what were you going to say?

Speaker 22 No, that's actually so fair.

Speaker 22 But yeah, no, what I was going to say is I think like part of what works about this is that it's like intentionally vague so that like you as a you know know potential suitor for me or whatever, potential match for me can like project yourself here.

Speaker 14 Well, let me say another obvious thing. It also implies that you're in bed together.
That's appealing to a lot of men as they're browsing through the hinge app. So it has that going for it.

Speaker 14 But to me, this is a perfect answer because it is sweet. It is specific enough.
It is intimate. It is inviting.

Speaker 15 And it gives men the opportunity to brag to you about the books that they're reading. Exactly.
That is the key piece to this.

Speaker 14 So this is a perfect answer to which the hinge AI naturally said, let's go a little deeper.

Speaker 15 Yeah. And so how did you try to do that, Rachel?

Speaker 22 All right. So it said, try adding more details about your favorite books or genres.
It helps show your interests. So

Speaker 22 I actually originally changed it to, I'm looking for someone to read a historical fiction book next to in bed.

Speaker 22 And it said, basically, try again. And it suggested that I could actually solicit recommendations.
So I tried again and I said, someone to read a historical fiction book next to in bed, open to Rex.

Speaker 22 Exclamation mark.

Speaker 15 Ooh.

Speaker 22 Which I feel like, I know, I feel like it's so gringe.

Speaker 15 All of a sudden, I'm dating Goodreads.

Speaker 22 Exactly. It's like, am I trying to meet someone or am I just trying to get book recommendations?

Speaker 22 But the AI still wanted me to be even more specific. It said, if you want to add more, consider sharing your favorite historical fiction titles.
What draws you to this genre?

Speaker 14 No, see, again,

Speaker 14 the AI has just been tuned wrong, right? Because the AI has been tuned to say, make sure to ask for specifics, make sure to ask for details, which can be really good on a prompt.

Speaker 14 And I do think is a message that a lot of online daters need to learn.

Speaker 14 But because it has no human sense of what is actually cute, it could not read Rachel's original prompt and understand all of the ways in which it would obviously appeal to a lot of people. Yes.

Speaker 14 So I'm actually giving the AI a failing grade on this one.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I'm not impressed. I liked your original better.

Speaker 22 Thank you. I agree.
I don't love this one, but here's where I ended up that actually made the AI happy.

Speaker 22 So I ended up with, I'm looking for someone to read a historical fiction book next to in bed, open to Rex exclamation mark, especially love stories set in New York City.

Speaker 15 No, no,

Speaker 15 yeah, it's deliberate. It's giving LinkedIn.
Yeah, goodbye. Okay.
Well,

Speaker 22 I thought the same thing, but I changed this a little over a week ago. And you guys, I was very surprised.
I actually got. a lot more engagement.

Speaker 15 Oh my gosh. Really?

Speaker 22 So wait, let me show you. This next slide is responses from men, specifically onto this book one.
And so

Speaker 22 I have here someone who's written to me like, okay, it's not New York City related, but it's definitely love and historical fiction. Let me know if you're interested.
It's a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Speaker 22 I love this one too because they didn't give me the book in the actual initial message. So exactly.
So I have to match with them to get the name of the book.

Speaker 22 And then, you know, something similar here is someone's recommending a specific book.

Speaker 15 Now, I have a question about this, Rachel. Yeah.
So my presumption is that some of the men on dating apps are also using AI to craft their responses.

Speaker 15 So what is your sense of whether these people are kind of running your prompt through an AI and just copying and pasting what the AI tells them?

Speaker 22 I would say that I personally do not think I have come across many people who are using AI.

Speaker 22 And there are a few reasons that I feel that way.

Speaker 15 One is that the grammar is horrible. Horrible.

Speaker 22 Also, just, I don't know, even if you look at these two examples, like this feels very specific and like not something AI would have come up with.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 Well, I mean, I mean, these are both, you know, really good responses. They're very engaging.

Speaker 14 I do think that they, they reveal something that the AI has picked up on, which is that if you ask a man to recommend something, he is unfortunately going to have an opinion about that that he might want to share with you.

Speaker 14 That's true. So that was smart.
Now, Rachel, I'm seeing in this screenshot that your battery was all the way down at 19%.

Speaker 15 Do you usually let it get that low?

Speaker 22 Actually, my battery is at 3% in that other one. Yes.
Actually, this is a huge complaint amongst my friends is that my phone is always dying and I refuse to invest in a

Speaker 15 battery pack? Yeah,

Speaker 15 that's our Valentine's Day present to you. We're getting you a battery pack.

Speaker 14 Let's keep going. What else did we learn?

Speaker 15 What is your overall impression of this AI feature? Do you think it helped you make more matches? Do you think it helped you get better matches? How useful is this AI feature for struggling daters?

Speaker 22 My initial reaction to this tool when I started using it was sort of similar to, I think, how you guys are feeling, which is like, this AI is not tuned properly. It like does not understand humor.

Speaker 22 It does not understand all these important features about like, you know, being sort of mysterious and dating.

Speaker 22 But actually, now that I went through the process and did have more people engaging me, I do have this sense that it, it did do something very useful for people, which is I do think it gave them like a more concrete, like narrower, and maybe more like vivid picture of me.

Speaker 22 And it sort of reminded me of like what happens to high school students when they are like being coached by guidance counselors to apply to college.

Speaker 22 Like you end up having to sell a very specific story about yourself, which everyone knows is like a little bit reductive and not totally authentic, but like there's a reason that you're coached to do that.

Speaker 22 The reason is that like for people who are screening applicants, it's easier to have a vision of the person and have some sort of visceral reaction to like, should we admit that person or not?

Speaker 22 I think the same is true in dating to some extent.

Speaker 15 Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 15 I mean, it also just seems like maybe there's a point, like this, this seems like a very minor kind of augmentation of your dating profile, but I think you can imagine a scenario where just AI is allowed to kind of write your whole profile for you.

Speaker 15 Or like maybe it goes through your social media or your LinkedIn or you write it a little description of yourself and then it crafts a profile for you. But I think

Speaker 15 at some point it would start to feel like an inauthentic representation of who you were if you hadn't actually done the writing of the profile yourself. Did you feel at all like that?

Speaker 15 Like you were maybe,

Speaker 15 I don't know, giving over this very personal thing to an AI that doesn't actually know you that well?

Speaker 22 So, I mean, I think that this was actually something smart that Hinge clearly, very intentionally did.

Speaker 22 Like part of what makes the tool not that helpful, but also what prevents exactly what you're talking about, they don't actually tell you, like, here's what you should stay instead.

Speaker 22 They just give you sort of the same advice that like an English teacher in middle school would give you, which is like, show, don't tell, give more examples.

Speaker 22 And I found that actually, I found it extremely hard. Like, it took me in one instance, like, actively playing away at this, like a full 30 minutes of tweaking and rewriting.

Speaker 22 And, you know, like, that, that's a huge time commitment. And yeah, it was, it was really hard to satisfy the AI.

Speaker 14 What I'm curious about is what will be the experience of the median hinge user?

Speaker 14 Because you are not the median hinge user, you are a great writer, you work in media, you know how to sell a story, you're gorgeous, you're charming. You don't need the help of an AI, okay?

Speaker 14 But when I think about all the hinge profiles that I used to see of these guys, and it, you know, be like, What are your interests? And it would be coffee, food, and travel.

Speaker 14 Yeah, and I thought, I don't know one thing about you. Like, obviously, you like food, like we all eat it every day, right?

Speaker 14 So I'm curious for those people, how useful do you think this kind of tool can be? Can it get them from I love coffee travel food to actually sharing something revealing about themselves?

Speaker 22 So this is like my big question that I am really hoping you guys will push Justin, the CEO of Hinge On, which is like, exactly.

Speaker 22 They have marketed this tool, especially like to investors at least, as a tool for struggling daters. What do we know about struggling daters?

Speaker 22 They either don't put much time time and effort into their profile or they are not sort of comfortable putting themselves out there.

Speaker 22 I don't see how an AI telling them, share a little bit more about yourself, is going to actually help those people. You know, if you're someone who's writing, what do I order for the table? Pizza.

Speaker 22 Like, I think that is an intentional choice. Yeah.

Speaker 14 Well, Rachel, that's a fascinating experiment. And thank you for walking us through it.
If people want to date you, how can they get in touch?

Speaker 15 Actually, they could check check out my newsletter and write to me there yes it's a very good newsletter and if any hard fork listeners uh want to go check it out and maybe shoot their shot on hinge uh they can find you there too thank you so much rachel happy valentine happy valentine's happy valentine's day

Speaker 14 well kevin a lot hinges on our next segment yeah hinge ceo justin mcloud is here that's when we come back

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Speaker 14 All right, Kevin. Well, now that we've heard Rachel's experience on Hinge, I think it's time to take that feedback straight to the source.
Let's bring in Justin McLeod.

Speaker 14 He's the CEO of Hinge, and he's been thinking a lot lately about the future of AI and dating.

Speaker 15 Yeah, let's get a little unhinged.

Speaker 14 He'll be joining us from the McLeod.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 15 All right.

Speaker 15 Justin McLeod, welcome to Hard Fork.

Speaker 18 Hi. Thank you for having me.
Really appreciate it.

Speaker 14 Well, we couldn't think of a better CEO to have on our Valentine's Day episode. I have to imagine that Valentine's Day is big over at Hitch.
Like, is this like tax season over at Hinge for you guys?

Speaker 18 In the early days, we actually used to give Valentine's Day as a holiday to all of our employees. But, you know, interestingly, Valentine's Day is really a day for couples and less for singles.

Speaker 18 So it's a bit of a tricky love-hate relationship with Valentine's Day for an hinge.

Speaker 14 I have to tell a story, which is that when I was single, I had a friend who is like,

Speaker 14 Look, if you're going to find somebody, you have to subscribe to the premium version of one of these dating apps. So I actually bought Tinder Premium on Valentine's Day.

Speaker 14 And like every year for like, you know, three or four years, it would renew on Valentine's Day.

Speaker 18 You get the renewal. Exactly.

Speaker 15 And it was always just a reminder that I hadn't quite yet figured things out.

Speaker 14 So in that way, Valentine's Day was big.

Speaker 15 Now, Justin, I understand you have kind of a wild story about meeting your wife. Do you want to tell us that story?

Speaker 18 Oh, I mean, we could take the whole podcast

Speaker 18 story.

Speaker 15 It's a long one.

Speaker 18 Well, I married my college sweetheart, but we had a eight-year break where we didn't speak to each other. And

Speaker 18 I started Hinge

Speaker 18 during that period, about halfway through that period. And I let her know I included her on all all the launch emails.

Speaker 15 And just to be like, hey, just in case anyone is asking me.

Speaker 15 Wink, wink.

Speaker 18 But the short version is that about a month before she's about to get married to someone else, I flew over to Switzerland and asked her to call off the wedding. And she moved back to New York.

Speaker 18 And yeah, and actually we just had our eight-year wedding anniversary yesterday.

Speaker 14 Wow, happy anniversary. Happy anniversary.

Speaker 15 Thank you.

Speaker 15 We have just talked with our producer, Rachel, about her her experience using some new AI features on Hinge.

Speaker 14 And spoiler alert, she's still single. Let's just say that.

Speaker 15 Yes. And I've only ever had an experience of AI trying to break up my relationship, but you all think that you can use AI to help people get into relationships.

Speaker 15 So tell us about the overall picture you see of how AI and dating apps are poised to intersect.

Speaker 18 Yeah, well, I'm sure you all are thinking about this a lot, but AI is going to be a pretty disruptive and transformative force in a whole lot of industries.

Speaker 18 And I don't think dating is any different than that. I think that when I see what's coming, it's going to be a bigger transition than even what happened with the transition to mobile.

Speaker 18 And there are a couple of big ways that I think this is really going to come to life. One is personalized matching, and two is effective coaching.

Speaker 18 So, personalized matching is getting to know our daters on a much deeper level about who they are, what they're looking for, and being able to make just much more thoughtful matches with people that

Speaker 18 go two or three or four or five levels deep to make sure that they're aligned so that you don't end up with someone that three months in, you realize you're misaligned on some major sense of your values or some, you're misaligned on your goals and the alignment problem.

Speaker 15 No, that's something else.

Speaker 15 The other alignment problem. Right.

Speaker 18 So that's one piece of it. I think it's just like much more thoughtful matching.
We're going to be able to ask much more nuanced and deeper questions, understand much more nuanced feedback.

Speaker 18 The other big vector is the coaching piece, which we have a whole lot of daters who really struggle to get on that first date or even get that first match. And they don't always know why.

Speaker 18 Is it the photos they chose? Is it the prompts they're writing?

Speaker 18 And we can help push people and guide people to fill out their profiles well, take the right actions, just not get in their own way because none of us are born good at dating apps.

Speaker 14 So those are two potentially useful approaches.

Speaker 15 Maybe let's take them in order a little bit.

Speaker 14 I want to ask about this idea of the AI matchmaking. So my understanding is that for a long time, dating apps have used various machine learning algorithms to pair people up.

Speaker 14 They seem to be sort of grouping and scoring people along certain criteria. Maybe, you know, sort of how attractive is this person viewed within the community, that sort of thing.

Speaker 14 What are those next two or three layers? What are the other signals that you could glean?

Speaker 14 And what makes you confident that they they would paint a picture of somebody that was actually useful in connecting them to somebody else?

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 18 So there's a number of different ways to think about this. First of all, when Hinge launched back in,

Speaker 18 well, the version of Hinge today back in 2015, the algorithm was mostly driven by not even so much information that we knew about you, but more about your relationship to other people in the app.

Speaker 18 So who did you like? Did other people who liked that person also like this person? So maybe we'll suggest this person to you.

Speaker 18 It was a lot of, well, you guys are technical, so collaborative filtering kind of models as opposed to content-based.

Speaker 18 So one is just moving into a much more content-based world where we're actually taking a look at your photos, actually reading your prompts, using that information to make much more thoughtful and intelligent matches.

Speaker 15 So that's one layer.

Speaker 18 We can start to ask much more nuanced questions that don't always fit into an easy multi-select dropdown option of like, what is your religion or what's your height?

Speaker 18 But understanding your backstory and what matters to you and what your relationship history is and using all that information to first just make the logical connections that you would make to make much more thoughtful matches.

Speaker 18 And then there's a whole other layer to that that I'm excited that we're already starting to explore, which is how do we use relationship science?

Speaker 18 There's a lot of papers out there and a lot of people who have thought about what types of personalities do well together, what leads to long-term relationship.

Speaker 18 and being able to actually bring not just to learn your tastes and their tastes and see a likelihood of an initial match, but actually think more deeply about long-term compatibility.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 14 Let me ask the cynical question because I think some listeners are maybe going to be thinking this, which is when you're on an online dating app, is it 90% of them just whether you think they look cute in their photos?

Speaker 14 Like, is there really that much deeper left to plumb with AI and all the rest?

Speaker 18 I think that there's a ton. I think when photos, a lot of people will make snap judgments based on photos, but that's just foot in the door.

Speaker 18 Then there's a whole lot of other aspects that matter, whether you're actually going to show up on a date with this person and get along and want to go out on a second date.

Speaker 18 And that's why I think King has been so successful because we haven't really based it on photos.

Speaker 18 If you like someone, you actually have to go through their profile and choose something about them that you did like. Everyone has to fill out three prompts.

Speaker 18 Let's say looks matter too, and it's kind of the easiest thing to make a snap judgment on, but there's a whole lot that comes after getting your foot in the door with regard to looks. Got it.

Speaker 15 Well, let's talk about the coaching piece of this too. So we just talked with our producer, Rachel, about this new prompt feedback tool that you all have rolled out.

Speaker 15 What other ways are you seeing AI be potentially useful in coaching users on Hinge?

Speaker 18 Yeah, so it's going to run the gamut from starting with tips and tools all the way to really helping people navigate the emotional ups and downs and maintaining a sense of confidence and hopefulness through their journey.

Speaker 18 We're starting with the tips and tools. So that's things like a photo finder.

Speaker 18 We can learn what types of photos do well on Hinge and what don't and build models that we can help you choose which photos to select for your dating profile.

Speaker 18 Another one is prompt feedback, which is a really exciting thing that we just launched. And we've learned that through that feature, we were able to

Speaker 18 triple the incidence of high-quality prompt answers and reduce by more than a third those kind of low-quality, like one-word answers, which is pretty transformative.

Speaker 14 So I want to understand a little bit about how you built this system and what it is looking for.

Speaker 14 As we were looking through Rachel's prompts, it seemed like mostly what the AI was trying to do was to elicit more specificity in her answer.

Speaker 14 So I'm guessing that's kind of one of the criteria. Are there others?

Speaker 14 And how did you come up with what essentially were the criteria that you were going to use to say this is a great prompt versus go back to the drawing board?

Speaker 18 There are a few different criteria in terms of just is this easy to start a conversation from? Specificity is a big thing because the more specific it is, the more it lets people in.

Speaker 18 Does it reveal something about you?

Speaker 18 It is largely pushing people towards a bit more specificity when they respond.

Speaker 14 And is that rooted in, like you have an empirical sense that when people are sort of more specific when they write these prompts, they tend to get more answers and meet more people.

Speaker 18 Definitely. And we've been doing that since the beginning, not just looking, by the way, at the prompt answers, but also the prompt questions.

Speaker 18 Like what types of questions actually lead to people responding in a way that leads to a date?

Speaker 18 And we think about this kind of efficiency frontier of vulnerability, where there are some questions we can ask that people feel very comfortable answering, but don't lead to a date, like my go-to karaoke song, which everyone's willing to answer and leads to a date never.

Speaker 18 And then there are things that, you know, like what I wish I could change with my relationship with my mother, that if you answer, might lead to a really in-depth conversation about your values and everything else, but you know, no one's that's a lot to post online for everyone to see.

Speaker 14 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 18 So there's this like sweet spot that we're always trying to navigate at Hinge about like, where is the point at which people are willing to share?

Speaker 18 And where is the point that actually lets other people in? And it's what other people want to know.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 15 Now, I have a question about sort of this, this use of AI for improving one's profile or, you know, maybe pointing out where your, your answers are a little generic, which is that if everyone is using this stuff, doesn't that kind of flatten the landscape?

Speaker 15 Doesn't that actually, because part of what you're doing when you're trying to, you know, look for people on an app like Hinge is to filter out people as well as filtering them into your set of potential matches.

Speaker 15 So if I see someone who just says, you know, I like pineapple on pizza, that may be a red flag for me because I say, oh, that person's generic or they're not, you know, creative or maybe, maybe we're not going to connect.

Speaker 15 If everyone is using these tools, doesn't that kind of raise the floor and make it harder to filter out people who you might not be a good match with?

Speaker 18 I understand what you're saying. And our belief is that people really do have things to offer.
Sometimes they just need a little bit of nudging and help to offer it in the right way.

Speaker 18 I personally know lots of people who are super dynamic, interesting, fun people. And then I look at their profile, they're like, can you help me with my profile?

Speaker 18 And I'm like, wow, this like completely misses you. Like you, you could do so much better here to like choose better photos or just represent yourself.

Speaker 18 And I think people just often don't come across well in their dating profile. And that shouldn't necessarily be the barometer for whether you're going to have a good relationship with them or not.

Speaker 15 Yeah. I mean, I guess to me, it...

Speaker 15 It feels a little bit like using AI to do sort of the personality equivalent of airbrushing a photo.

Speaker 15 It's like, here's the AI that's going to make you seem a little more original, a little more creative, a little more charming than you maybe actually would be on your own.

Speaker 15 But maybe I'm not being too cynical.

Speaker 18 But that's the principle between coaching and giving people the answers, right? We're not like you give you write a prompt answer and we're like, hey, use this one instead.

Speaker 18 We're just saying, hey, could you say a little bit more about that?

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 18 And that, I think, is just the little bit of extra nudging people need to still be in their own voice and still be authentically them, but just not be afraid to be a bit more vulnerable and a little bit more specific.

Speaker 14 To me, like the interesting tension that I always felt like I was navigating when I was creating an online dating profile is on one hand, you do want to seem unique, quirky.

Speaker 14 You want to stand out from the pack, not be like, you know, all the other guys.

Speaker 14 On the other hand, you wanted to seem normal, approachable, like a recognizable kind of person that somebody might want to go and have a drink with.

Speaker 14 And I don't know if I ever figured out exactly how far to lean in either direction. And I'm sure, you know, probably both directions work depending on which person you want to wind up with.

Speaker 14 But I'm curious if you think... AI is pushing in any particular direction.
Is it always going to push us to sort of be more unique?

Speaker 14 Or are there moments where it's going to say it looks like you're confessing to a felony in this prompt you may want to walk that back

Speaker 18 i i don't know about that latter one uh

Speaker 18 so

Speaker 18 our goal is to like bring out the uniqueness in people and that's why we're again we're so conscious about um asking you to bring your best self forward and not trying to give you the answer or right for you i mean ai is a tool it can be used to flatten it can be used to make everyone the same and tell everyone to put the same thing in the in the box or it can be used to like really find out what's unique about you and bring that out and i think that is the certainly the better formula for hinge because people are unique people are different and we want to help them showcase that yeah now i want to ask you maybe a slight detour question which is not specifically about AI, but is about these romance scams that we've heard so much about.

Speaker 15 I get a lot of emails from listeners and readers talking about how one of the things that makes them very wary of online dating is the prevalence prevalence of these scammers who will pretend to be interested in you.

Speaker 15 They'll send you some flirty messages. Maybe they'll even strike up a relationship with you.
And then they'll tell you, you know, I can help you make money trading crypto or something.

Speaker 15 And then all of a sudden your bank account is drained. So is that an area of focus for you at Hinge? Are you seeing a lot of that activity? And is AI helping at all in protecting users from that?

Speaker 18 That's, I mean, another big advantage, I think, of AI is like our, we have a very big and dedicated trust and and safety team.

Speaker 18 And we don't see that as a big problem on Hinge because we really do catch people.

Speaker 18 We can look at their IP address, prior photos, behavior on the app, behavior patterns and all of that and use AI models to catch people as quickly as possible.

Speaker 14 I want to talk about the potential use of AI in the actual conversations.

Speaker 14 When I use dating apps, I never felt more like a bot on the internet than I did in the, like in the first four exchanges with anyone on a a Hingroid Tinder, right? It's like, hi, hi, how are you?

Speaker 14 Good, good, how are you? I'm good, how was your weekend? It was fine, how's yours, right? And you just repeat that, like ad infinitum.

Speaker 14 I can imagine actually just asking an AI bot to go do that on my behalf and get me to the interesting part of a conversation.

Speaker 14 I could also imagine somebody like you saying, well, I don't know if I actually want the AI to be sending the messages.

Speaker 14 So how are you thinking about letting AI do more of the writing for your users over time?

Speaker 18 Well, it's the principle of coaching. So we don't want to write for our users.

Speaker 18 So one of the great things about Hinge is that you don't just like someone, they like you back, and then you're a match go, because that does lead oftentimes to a kind of a generic exchange.

Speaker 18 On Hinge, you actually have to like something about them and you can add a comment and you have very rich profiles.

Speaker 18 And there's a lot of opportunity for us to help coach people to engage with a with a piece of content on someone's profile, whether it's a prompt or a photo.

Speaker 18 And that's something else that we are exploring and we actually plan to start testing next quarter is helping give people conversation starters.

Speaker 18 Again, not like what to say, but hey, like, did you notice this in their profile? Maybe this would be a good thing to ask them about.

Speaker 18 And I think that that, once again, is just giving people the right nudges to move the conversation in the right direction so that you actually end up on a date.

Speaker 14 Would you ever use AI to determine who is doing a lot of ghosting and saying, hmm, seems like you're leaving a lot of messages unread. Is something going on with with you, Kevin?

Speaker 18 Well, interestingly, I'm not sure we need AI for that. We just recently released Your Turn Limits, which was a feature precisely because of that.

Speaker 18 We looked at responsiveness on the app and we saw that a lot of the unresponsiveness was because of just a few people who match with a lot of people and then don't respond.

Speaker 18 And so we introduced Your Turn Limits, which essentially, if it's your turn to respond in a conversation, you can only collect so many of those.

Speaker 18 I think the number is about eight before you're blocked from sending likes or matching with new people until you start responding to the people that you've already matched with.

Speaker 14 That's excellent. Good job.
That's good. I like that.

Speaker 18 Thank you. It was one of the few positive Reddit threads.

Speaker 14 We almost never see those.

Speaker 15 And it was like, wow, this feature is really amazing.

Speaker 18 We even had someone do a like write a one-star review on the App Store and then come back and change it a little bit later to be like, never mind, this feature is amazing.

Speaker 18 And we saw responsiveness increase by like 20, 30%.

Speaker 14 It speaks to something so real, though, which is that part of the fun of an app like Hinge is it gives you access to, you know, hundreds or even thousands of like really cool people wherever you may live.

Speaker 14 But there's a sort of game-like nature to it. And it is fun to just, you know, collect matches and feel, you know, very attractive.

Speaker 14 But if you're on the other side of that and you're a human being and you're actually trying to date, like nothing in the world is more frustrating.

Speaker 14 So that strikes me as a really good example of a feature that essentially just reminds the entire user base, you are human beings talking to other human beings and you have to treat them with kindness and respect.

Speaker 14 Yes.

Speaker 15 I want to ask about the big buzzword of the year in AI, which is agents and agency. A lot of dating apps are planning or at least talking about releasing some kind of agentic feature.

Speaker 15 The founder of Bumble, Whitney Wolf Heard, got a lot of attention for some comments she made last year talking about how one day users might have an AI dating concierge who kind of goes out onto an app for you and dates other users, AI concierges, and says, you know, basically, let's go on a date as proxies for these two real people and maybe see if they would be compatible.

Speaker 15 Grinder is also testing an AI wingman feature that will roll out in 2027 and offer suggestions like where to go on a date. Is that a direction that Hinge is thinking about?

Speaker 15 Are you at all excited about the use of AI agents to date on users' behalf?

Speaker 18 That is not something that we're looking at. And I think that we just have this principle at Hinge that AI should really stand behind us and not between us.

Speaker 18 And that means that we are not in a world where you are being replaced by agents who are dating on your behalf. Like the journey of dating is something that I think we each need to take

Speaker 15 on our own.

Speaker 18 But having, again, the coaching and the nudging can be very, very helpful to people.

Speaker 18 I also think just practically and technically, we're not even close to a world where you could train an agent to be enough in your voice and understand your values and personalities and actually learn these things on your behalf.

Speaker 14 Totally. I hear a story like that.
I'm like, like, this is just like science fiction that you're telling your shareholder so that your stock price goes up. Like, obviously those tools don't exist.

Speaker 14 Maybe they would exist. Maybe some people would like them.

Speaker 15 I mean, I've already seen people testing out the ChatGPT operator, having it drive their online dating profile. So I don't think this is science fiction.

Speaker 18 Now, whether it's good or not is a different yeah, whether it's going to lead to the result you want, I think is the, is the question.

Speaker 18 And I, and we're trying to get people out on dates with people that they're actually going to like.

Speaker 14 Justin, I wonder if you could give a bit, a little bit of a pep talk to users of yours like Rachel, who are out there. They're using their AI prompts.
They're not ghosting on their matches.

Speaker 14 They're showing up for these dates. It hasn't happened for them yet.

Speaker 14 What have you learned from your years in love and as the CEO of a dating app about what actually gets people across the finish line to find their person?

Speaker 18 For me, it was a shift in mentality.

Speaker 18 I think the biggest thing that I've learned about love and my biggest change from when I started Hinge back in 2011 to where I am today is the belief that there is the one or that you find the one versus that you create the one.

Speaker 18 And I think that a lot of us miss

Speaker 18 A one, maybe V one, because we have such a specific idea of like what this has to be. And it's like we're shopping for the perfect person.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 when I created Hinge the first time, it was like, go through as many people as possible. And as soon as you find the one, then everything just like works from there.

Speaker 18 And the interesting experience that I had when I got my one back, right? The one I dreamed about, I was like, oh, the one that got away from college.

Speaker 18 And then I flew over to Switzerland and she moved back. And it was amazing for like two months.
And then I was like, oh, oh my God, if I made a mistake, like there's flaws here.

Speaker 18 But we stuck, you know, we stuck with it, obviously, for 10 years now. And

Speaker 18 now we have just like amazing, deep, beautiful, incredible relationship. And I think that this mentality that you have to start building and creating the one and stop like searching for the one.

Speaker 18 For most of us, I think it's a, it's a messier journey. And you've, and you choose someone and then you're like, okay, this is it.
Let's, let's make this work together.

Speaker 14 That's really beautiful.

Speaker 14 You know, I find myself asking the question, and I don't know that AI will ever be able to do this, but to me, a real question that I have, you know, when I was online dating was like, is this person like really looking for a relationship?

Speaker 14 Are they ready to be in a relationship? Like, do they know what that means? I don't think there's any way to figure that out aside from just going out with them and getting a sense of it.

Speaker 14 But yeah, I mean, I think the difference between like me now and me then is I am now dating somebody who like wants to be in a relationship and like knew that about himself. Yeah.
You gotta get that.

Speaker 15 You gotta get there. Yeah, it's a journey for everyone.
I know, but Casey has a boyfriend.

Speaker 15 He's very handsome. He often brings it up by often.
I mean, several times an episode.

Speaker 14 It's a Valentine's Day episode.

Speaker 15 People want to hear about love.

Speaker 15 And we are thrilled for Casey.

Speaker 14 It's an inspiring story. I'm so afraid of a boyfriend.

Speaker 15 Thank you.

Speaker 15 They did meet on Tinder, so I don't know that you should congratulate them.

Speaker 14 But I was on Hitch.

Speaker 14 I was ready to meet him anywhere.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 And if I can just say one more thing, don't give up, people. You know, I was single.
I went on so many online dates and I thought, this isn't working.

Speaker 14 And then I went on one more online date and it worked. And then I thought, online dating is fine.
So that was my journey. You know, let me know what yours is in the the comments.

Speaker 14 It's hard out there, but don't give up.

Speaker 15 And if Casey can find someone,

Speaker 15 you can too.

Speaker 15 Amen.

Speaker 15 All right. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Justin. Thanks for having me.

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Speaker 14 Hard Fork is produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones. We're edited this week by Rachel Dry, and we're fact-checked by Caitlin Love.
Today's show was engineered by Chris Wood.

Speaker 14 Original music by Marion Lozano, Rowan Nemisto, and Dan Powell. Our executive producer is Jen Poyant.
Our audience editor is Nel Galogli.

Speaker 14 Video production by Sawyer Roquet, Pat Gunther, and Chris Schott. You can watch this whole episode on YouTube at youtube.com slash hard fork.

Speaker 14 Special thanks to Paula Schuman, Pui Wing Tam, Dahlia Haddad, and Jeffrey Miranda. You can email us at hardfork at lytimes.com with what's on your dating profile.

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