In a post a couple of weeks ago about who gains, and who loses, status as a result of ChatGPT (and other large language models), I wrote:
There is one more context I want to highlight, which is a particular favourite of mine when teaching signalling to first-year students: online dating. It is difficult for a person to signal their quality as a potential date on a dating app. Anyone can write a good profile, and use a stock photo. However, one of the few signals that might be effective is the conversation on the app before a first date. A 'good' date should be able to set themselves apart from a 'not-so-good' date, by the things they say during a conversation. However, with ChatGPT in the picture, the signalling value of what people write in dating app conversations is reduced (in contrast to the assertions in this article in The Conversation). I wonder how long it will be before we end up in a situation where one instance of ChatGPT is talking to another instance of ChatGPT, because both dating app users are using ChatGPT at the same time (it has probably happened already). Anyway, good quality dates will lose status as well.
It turns out that I was almost certainly right that ChatGPTs are talking to each other on dating apps. The Washington Post reported earlier this week (paywalled):
Coyne Lloyd, a 35-year-old tech investor, was visiting his family in Upstate New York recently when he decided to set up some dates in the city. He fired up Hinge, his preferred dating app, and swiped on a few interesting women. After receiving a couple of matches, he turned, out of curiosity, to a new AI dating tool called Rizz to break the ice...
Rizz, which is meant to function as a digital wingman, helps users come up with killer opening lines and responses to potential matches. The company behind it is just one of many start-ups trying to transform romance through artificial intelligence by optimizing and automating online dating, now one of the primary ways by which people find romantic connections...
Using dating apps can be a slog. Some people complain that they have to sift through countless matches as others indiscriminately swipe; it is difficult to start conversations with strangers; and many users end up viewing the apps more as a necessary chore than an exciting opportunity to connect with someone new...
That is what drove Dmitri Mirakyan, 28, a data scientist in New York, to develop YourMove.ai, an AI dating tool that helps users begin and respond to messages. “This past summer, I got really tired of sifting through and trying to come up with responses on dating apps,” he said. “So I tried to see if GPT3 could flirt. It turns out it could. A month later, I built the first version [of the platform] on a Saturday.”
Using dating apps is costly. It takes time and effort. However, it is precisely the time and effort involved that makes messaging in a dating app a signal of a date's quality. The messaging function in a dating app provided an opportunity for high-quality dates to signal that they were high quality. High-quality dates are willing to put in the time and effort to write appealing messages. Low-quality dates are not as willing to put in the time and effort. If you eliminate the time and effort required in messaging through a dating app, you eliminate the value of the signal. You end up back in a pooling equilibrium, where anyone you exchange messages with in the app is just as likely to be low-quality (and using AI) as they are to be high-quality. Or worse. Maybe the availability of AI for dating apps crowds out the high-quality dates, leaving only low-quality dates behind. In that case, every person you exchange messages with in the app is low quality.
It is difficult to see how dating apps can restore the previous separating equilibrium, that in-app messaging allowed for (separating the high-quality dates from the low-quality dates). I suggested in my earlier post that in-person meet-ups could become even more important as a tool for sorting out high-quality dates from low-quality dates. That is costly as well, and in an age where ChatGPT can be projected onto a pair of glasses in real time, even the conversation in a real life meet-up may not provide a good signal.
AI may be the killer app of the moment, but it also appears that it may be the killer of (dating) apps. However, markets do adapt. It will be interesting to see how the dating market adapts.
[HT: Marginal Revolution]
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