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

Summary

Hard Fork Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast Information:

• Title: Hard Fork
• Host/Authors: Kevin Roose and Casey Newton (The New York Times)
• Description: “Hard Fork” explores the future of technology, with journalists delving into the latest advancements and their implications.
• Episode: A.I. Accelerates in Paris + Can A.I. Fix Your Love Life?
• Release Date: February 14, 2025

---

Introduction to the Episode

[00:33]
The episode begins with Casey Newton and Kevin Roose exchanging greetings and discussing their Valentine's Day plans. This light-hearted banter segues into the main topics of the episode: AI developments discussed at the Paris AI Action Summit and the integration of AI in the realm of online dating.

---

Paris AI Action Summit: A Shift in Focus

[03:04] Kevin Roose:
Kevin provides an overview of his experience at the Paris AI Action Summit, highlighting the attendance of key industry leaders such as Dario Amadei (Anthropic), Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind), and Sam Altman (OpenAI).

Key Highlights:

• Shift from Safety to Opportunity: Unlike previous summits focused on AI safety, the Paris summit emphasized the opportunities AI presents.
• French AI Leadership: French President Macron announced significant investments in the local AI ecosystem, promoting Mistral as France's leading AI company.

Notable Quote: [07:03] Kevin Roose:
“President Macron definitely wanted to talk up France's entry into the AI race... he wants to accelerate and move France into the category of AI leadership.”

---

Diverging Perspectives on AI Regulation

[07:24] Kevin Roose:
Kevin discusses Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech advocating for an “America First AI” agenda, emphasizing rapid AI development over safety concerns.

Key Points:

• Accelerationist Approach: Vance advocates for removing regulatory guardrails to fast-track AI advancements.
• Industry and Safety Concerns: Leaders like Dario Amadei of Anthropic voiced opposition, stressing the importance of addressing AI risks.

Notable Quote: [07:55] Casey Newton:
“The AI future is not going to be won by hand wringing about safety. It will be won by building.”

---

AI's Impact on Employment

[13:41] Casey Newton:
Casey references a Wall Street Journal article indicating a rise in unemployment within the information technology sector, suggesting early signs of AI-driven job displacement.

Key Insights:

• Job Automation: An Anthropic economic index revealed that 43% of current AI use involves automation, potentially increasing over time.
• Contrasting Views: J.D. Vance claims AI will only assist workers, conflicting with industry predictions of significant job loss.

Notable Quote: [12:17] Kevin Roose:
“J.D. vance said explicitly in his speech that he doesn't believe AI will replace workers. It will only help them.”

---

Lack of International AI Safety Cooperation

[20:25] Kevin Roose:
Kevin explains that the summit failed to produce a meaningful international declaration on AI safety. The U.S. and UK abstained from signing a leaked draft, perceived as insufficiently robust.

Key Takeaways:

• Nationalistic Approaches: Countries are prioritizing their own AI advancements over collaborative safety measures.
• Elon Musk’s Intervention: During a summit dinner, Elon Musk attempted to influence the restructuring of OpenAI, highlighting tensions within the AI community.

Notable Quote: [21:07] Casey Newton:
“Love the idea of a summit that produces a completely anodyne statement that commits nobody to anything...”

---

AI and Online Dating: Valentine's Day Special

[25:01] Kevin Roose:
The hosts transition to the Valentine’s Day special segment, focusing on the integration of AI in dating apps. They discuss user frustrations with dating platforms and the industry's response through AI enhancements.

---

Experiment with Hinge’s AI Prompt Feedback Tool

[27:10]
Rachel Cohn, the podcast’s producer, shares her experience using Hinge’s new AI prompt feedback tool designed to enhance dating profiles.

Key Points:

• AI Feedback Categories: The tool categorizes prompts as “Great answer,” “Try a small change,” or “Go deeper.”
• Experiment Results: Rachel highlights both successes and limitations, noting how the AI struggled with nuanced, humorous, or vulnerable responses.

Notable Interaction: [35:13] Casey Newton:
“I don't read that. And I think, oh, like, now I understand something about Ra. What? I understand something about a stranger you met at a wedding.”

---

Hinge’s AI Features: Personalized Matching and Coaching

[53:22] Rachel Cohn:
Rachel delves into Hinge’s AI-driven features aimed at improving matchmaking and providing user coaching.

Key Features:

• Personalized Matching: Utilizing deeper data points beyond basic prompts to enhance compatibility.
• Effective Coaching: Assisting users in crafting more engaging profiles and maintaining confidence during dating.

Notable Quote: [54:17] Rachel Cohn:
“We are just not going to take any action. When we come back, we're going to talk about a different kind of AI action.”

---

Potential Future of AI in Dating

[65:29] Casey Newton:
The conversation explores the ethical and practical implications of AI in shaping user interactions and profiles on dating platforms.

Discussion Highlights:

• Authenticity Concerns: The risk of profiles becoming homogenized due to AI-driven enhancements.
• AI Agents in Dating: Hinge’s CEO rejects the notion of AI agents dating on behalf of users, emphasizing authentic human connections.

Notable Quote: [69:26] Rachel Cohn:
“AI should really stand behind us and not between us. The journey of dating is something that I think we each do need to take on our own.”

---

Conclusion and Takeaways

[73:07] Rachel Cohn:
Rachel shares a personal story emphasizing the importance of authentic connections over AI-generated profiles, encouraging listeners not to give up on finding love.

Final Insights:

• Balancing AI Assistance: While AI can aid in enhancing profiles and matching, maintaining genuine human interaction remains crucial.
• Future Directions: Hinge aims to use AI as a supportive tool rather than a replacement for genuine human effort in dating.

Notable Quote: [70:57] Casey Newton:
“Don't give up, people. You know, I was single. I went on so many online dates, and I thought, this isn't working. And then I went on one more online date and it worked.”

---

Key Quotes for Emphasis:

1. Casey Newton on AI and Dating:
   [62:35] Rachel Cohn: “We are not in a world where you are being replaced by agents who are dating on your behalf.”

2. Kevin Roose on AI Flattening Profiles:
   [61:32] Kevin Roose: “If everyone is using these tools, doesn't that kind of flatten the landscape?”

3. Rachel Cohn on AI Coaching:
   [62:35] Rachel Cohn: “We're just saying, hey, could you say a little bit more about that?”

---

Conclusion: This episode of Hard Fork provides a comprehensive exploration of the current landscape of AI in both global policy and personal spheres like online dating. While industry leaders push for rapid AI advancement, concerns about safety and authenticity remain prominent. The integration of AI in dating apps like Hinge highlights both the potential benefits and challenges of using technology to foster human connections. As AI continues to evolve, the balance between assistance and genuine interaction will be pivotal in shaping future relationships and societal structures.

Transcript

[Casey Newton]

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[Kevin Roose]

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[Kevin Roose]

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[Casey Newton]

Well, big Valentine's Day show today, Kevin.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

Happy Valentine's Day.

[Kevin Roose]

Happy Valentine's Day.

[Casey Newton]

Are you a Valentine's Day person?

[Kevin Roose]

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. They give you these little crappy prefix menus. It's not a good scene. So we are going out on Thursday.

[Casey Newton]

That makes a lot of sense. And you've done this for years now?

[Kevin Roose]

Yes.

[Casey Newton]

And do you tell the servers that you're sort of sneaking. Sneaking in a little early for Valentine's?

[Kevin Roose]

No. But I don't think we're the only people who 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? Are you celebrating Valentine's Day?

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

Tell me about it.

[Casey Newton]

I bought. I bought decorations for my house on Valentine's Day. Some of them are battery operated. That's how into this I'm getting. I think it's going to be so much fun.

[Kevin Roose]

Wow.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

You are such a wife guy.

[Casey Newton]

Now I've become an absolute trad wife for my boyfriend.

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Casey Newton]

Do you know the Kelly Clarkson song, Miss Independent? Because it's about exactly this. It's about a sort of independent young woman who thinks she can make it in the world on her own. And then, oops, she falls in love. And then everything changes. So I'm looking forward to a great Valentine's Day.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, I'm excited for you.

[Casey Newton]

Thank you. Me, too.

[Kevin Roose]

I'm Kevin. Roos, a tech columnist at the New York Times.

[Casey Newton]

I'm Casey Newton from Platformer, and this is Hard Fork. This week, Kevin reports back from the Paris AI Action Summit, where there was a conspicuous lack of action. Then this Valentine's Day, we're using AI to spiff up one of our producers, dating Profiles. And finally, Change CEO Justin McCloud joins us to discuss what AI can do to help us find true love. You know, I'd settle for a decent co host.

[Kevin Roose]

Hey, now I'm sitting right here.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

Yes. Or we.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, you're. You're fully bilingual now that you've spent three days in Paris. What were you doing over there?

[Kevin Roose]

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, government leaders, people from academia and NGOs, just basically a whole bunch of very important AI figures were there. Dario Amadei from Anthropic, Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind, 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 over the world. Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

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?

[Kevin Roose]

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. 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. 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.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

No. I mean, 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.

[Casey Newton]

That's right. I'll start. Kevin, my boyfriend, works at Anthropic and.

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Casey Newton]

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.

[Kevin Roose]

Well, so maybe let's set the scene a little bit first. So you get to Paris and you have some choices. You can either go to the main summit, which is held in the Grand Palais, which is this, you know, giant exposition hall, you know, in the center of Paris, or you can go to the. These side events that are happening sort of a couple days before and a couple days after. The main event is that at the Petite Chateau. These are sort of, you know, events that are being held all over Paris. Many of them have more specific. Like there was a one about AI security or was one about AI safety. 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. I went to the. The main event on the first 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 and it's things like how to use AI to preserve languages that are, you know, maybe going to. To die out, or how to use AI to improve government benefits and welfare, or how to use AI to what?

[Casey Newton]

Doge was there.

[Kevin Roose]

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. So sort of how all the ways that I could help people, that was what they wanted to spotlight got.

[Casey Newton]

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. Reg.

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Casey Newton]

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 office. And, Kevin, what did J.D. vance have to say?

[Kevin Roose]

So J.D. vance showed up on the second day of the summit and gave a Big speech in which he basically outlined American 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. 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.

[Casey Newton]

Did you bring a clip?

[Kevin Roose]

Yes. Let's play a clip from his talk.

[Casey Newton]

I'm not here this morning to talk.

[Kevin Roose]

About AI safety, which was the title.

[Casey Newton]

Of the conference a couple of years ago.

[Kevin Roose]

I'm here to talk about AI opportunity.

[Casey Newton]

When conferences like this convene to discuss a cutting edge technology, oftentimes I think.

[Kevin Roose]

Our response is to be too self conscious, too risk averse.

[Casey Newton]

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.

[Kevin Roose]

It will be won by building. So that was the message from J.D. vance, was that worrying about AI safety is out and worrying about AI opportunity is in.

[Casey Newton]

Now how is this message received by other people in Le Grand Palais?

[Kevin Roose]

So there were a lot of people there who were happy to hear this. 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 fears that they don't agree with. 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 disagreed with the kind of vision that JD Vance laid out. Dario Amade, the CEO of Anthropic, wrote a statement in response to the summit. Just saying, like, 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.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah. 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?

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, I mean, I think a few things happened. The most obvious is the election of Donald Trump. 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. The Biden White House obviously put Together its executive order on AI. But Donald Trump is being influenced by a different set of people. He has among his inner circle, people like Marc Andreessen, who is kind of an AI accelerationist. 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. 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.

[Casey Newton]

Here's what I don't understand about this. Like, I think J.D. vance believes that United States is currently winning in the, 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. What I don't know, and I would love to find out, is what does JD Vance thinks happens after one of these labs creates super intelligence? Right.

[Kevin Roose]

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 the guardrails and remove all the regulations and just like go full speed ahead to AGI. Like, 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. It's a kind of techno pessimism that's sort of masquerading as optimism. 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. We're just kind of going to kind of like pretend it doesn't exist.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah. I wrote a column this week and the headline was America's New AI Safety Plan is let's see what happens. Because as far as I can tell, that's what it is. We're going to just create systems that are ever more powerful. And the Trump administration is signaling they do not intend to regulate them in any meaningful way.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah. And I think this was, to me, the thing that I felt at the summit was a sense of just two sort of parallel conversations happening that have almost no points of overlap. 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. 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. And then you have this other conversation which seems to be operating on a totally different timescale, which is like, let's start a blue ribbon commission to plan for how workers can adapt to AI and maybe we're going to release a report in a couple years. 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 traditional read of AI just basically being another technology.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah. There was this fascinating story that I saw in the Wall Street Journal by Bell, Lynn, and it found that the unemployment rate in the information technology sector rose from 3.9% in December to 5.7% in January, which is way above the overall jobless rate of 4%. 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.

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, absolutely. 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. 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, and I have to tell you, there are very few things more destabilizing to the politics of any country than huge unemployment numbers. And so if we're already starting to see those creep into the picture, then I think it it is a strategic mistake for folks like J.D. vance to stand at a podium and say, we're not gonna worry about any of this. It's just gonna be go, go, go to the finish line. Because in truth, there might be actually a huge political problem that is bubbling up under their nose.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah. And J.D. vance said explicitly in his speech that he doesn't believe AI will replace workers. 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. I mean, Sam Altman has said that they are building drop in workers that you could just sort of hire at your company. Many, many AI leaders have said that they do expect AI to create substantial job displacement in the coming years. And so if I think if you're J.D. vance or someone who's on his side of this, you actually have to do more than just say no, it won't.

[Casey Newton]

Yes.

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Casey Newton]

Yes, absolutely. Let me throw one more statistic at you. So this week Anthropic put out this new economic index where they're publishing a lot of data about the impact of AI on the economy as we know it so far. 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. But maybe not by as big a margin as you might think. 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. This stuff is going to get real in a hurry.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah. So I think the jobs area is one where the sort of J.D. vance vision of this is all going to be great. And if you're saying otherwise, you're just like a pessimistic doomer is going to clash with observable reality. But I also had a conversation with an AI safety person at the summit who was just sort of making the point that taking these extreme, extreme risks seriously is a prerequisite for acceleration. It is not actually opposed to acceleration. And the example that he used from historical analogs was nuclear power. 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. It's only recently that countries have started to build new nuclear power plants. And it's not actually because 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. 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. 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. 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?

[Casey Newton]

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.

[Kevin Roose]

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. And at that dinner, while Sam Altman was sitting next to J.D. vance, the news came in that Elon Musk was proposing to acquire the nonprofit of OpenAI for something like $97.4 billion.

[Casey Newton]

Yes, and this appears to be a trademark piece of legal trolling. Musk and his allies. OpenAI is, of course, in the midst of trying to convert itself into a for profit. And in order to do that, the nonprofit 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.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, this is all very complicated. We'll get into it probably in a future episode. I imagine that this is not the last time we'll talk about this OpenAI restructuring and some of the challenges there. 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.

[Casey Newton]

It's amazing Elon Musk had time to do that in the midst of dismantling the entire federal government. 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. And how did the United States feel about the declaration that came out of this summit?

[Kevin Roose]

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. It did not talk a lot about risks and, and harms that might result from AI, but the US 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 admin, that just sounded a little too woke for them. So the US 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.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, 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. Yeah, China signed it.

[Kevin Roose]

They did.

[Casey Newton]

That was nice.

[Kevin Roose]

So I was thinking on the plane ride back from Paris about sort of what I would take away from this summit, because I do think, number one.

[Casey Newton]

Whole bunch of croissants. Number two.

[Kevin Roose]

I did bring back one pastry for my wife.

[Casey Newton]

Smart.

[Kevin Roose]

Although it got crushed in my luggage.

[Casey Newton]

Oh, no. Sacre bleu.

[Kevin Roose]

Sacre bleu. 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. 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 the AI systems that were becoming increasingly powerful. I do not think that is going to happen after going to this summit. I think that countries are going to to take a much more nationalistic approach to this. They will want to win, they will not want to cooperate for the most part. 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. There may be some stuff happening at the state level, but I think we have pretty clearly seen JD Vance signal that the administration's position is kind of the all gas, no brakes position when it comes to AI.

[Casey Newton]

So it sounds like it was more of an inaction summit.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, it was kind of an action summit to say we're not going to take any action. When we come back, we're going to talk about a different kind of AI action. Our AI might be helping you get some action on dating apps this Valentine's Day.

[Rachel Cohn]

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[Kevin Roose]

Hi, this is Lori Leibovich, editor of well, at the New York Times. There's a lot of misinformation in the health and wellness space. But at the New York Times, no matter what the topic, we apply the same journalistic standards to everything we write about, whether it's the gut microbiome or how to get a good night's sleep, even if we're talking about something like is it bad for me to drink coffee on an empty stomach? Everything that our readers get when they dig into a well article has been vetted. Our reporters are consulting experts calling dozens of people doing the research. It can go on for months so that you can make great decisions about your physical health and your mental health. We take our reporting extra seriously because we know New York Times subscribers are counting on us.

[Casey Newton]

If you already subscribe, thank you.

[Kevin Roose]

If you'd like to subscribe, go to nytimes.com subscribe well, Kasey, this episode is coming out on Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

Yes, we have a Valentine's Day special today. We are going to talk specifically about dating apps.

[Casey Newton]

Kevin I think that this conversation is coming at a perfect time for us because, well, on one one hand, dating apps remain a very popular way for people of all ages to meet each other. 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. 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. So there's a lot of frustration out there.

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

Yes. So today we're going to take a look at how AI is reshaping or not reshaping the world of dating. And we're going to do this in two parts. 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. And in the second half, we're going to Talk with Justin McLeod, who's the CEO of Hinge, about how. How he thinks AI will transform the experience of online dating.

[Casey Newton]

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.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

And maybe find it in a hopeless place.

[Casey Newton]

Well, let me say, dating apps, more often than not, do feel like hopeless places. So let's hope we can find some love there.

[Kevin Roose]

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 going on a lot of Hinge dates.

[Casey Newton]

Dates, yes.

[Kevin Roose]

And being very open about her experiments with finding love.

[Casey Newton]

Crazy open.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes. She writes a great newsletter on substack called are you my boyfriend? Where she talks about her experiences in dating. And today she's going to tell us about what happened when she followed all of the advice of Hinges new AI tool to tweak her profile and find more matches.

[Casey Newton]

Oh, let's find out how that went.

[Kevin Roose]

Rachel Cohen, welcome to Hard Fork.

[Justin McLeod]

Hey, guys.

[Casey Newton]

Rachel, it's great to have you here. Let's talk about this experiment.

[Kevin Roose]

What are you going to have you here? She produces the show.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Justin McLeod]

Yeah, it does feel really formal.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, 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. Tell us about why you made that choice.

[Justin McLeod]

Yeah, so. 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 right now. And, you know, for me, I'm 30, I'm in New York, I'm straight Everyone that I know is on Hinge.

[Kevin Roose]

Right. It's the cool kids dating app.

[Justin McLeod]

Totally. The other thing that I think is, like, really relevant to what I'm gonna tell you guys is Hinge has, like, really marketed itself very intentionally as a place for serious relationships. That's also really interesting in 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.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Justin McLeod]

Yeah, I think that's fair.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Justin McLeod]

Okay, so Match Group, which is the parent company that owns. 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. 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. Apparently it's coming next month, which is using AI to kind of, like, better make matches, improving the algorithm in some way. The other tool or the other bucket of category that they are working on is AI for what they're calling the struggling data.

[Casey Newton]

Now, do you identify as a struggling dater?

[Justin McLeod]

So that's a good question. I would say it depends what we mean by struggling. I'm struggling in the sense that I have 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, is getting dates through Hinge.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Justin McLeod]

Some would say.

[Kevin Roose]

Some say, to put it in business terms, the top of the funnel is great. Is great.

[Casey Newton]

But it's the conversion we gotta convert.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, you gotta convert.

[Justin McLeod]

That's right.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Justin McLeod]

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

[Kevin Roose]

But.

[Justin McLeod]

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. Is called AI prompt feedback. 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.

[Kevin Roose]

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, like Neanderthals, and I have not spent time on dating apps as a result. So. So my understanding is that you have, you know, a profile that you fill out. It's got things on it like your interests and where you went to school and what you do.

[Casey Newton]

Yes.

[Kevin Roose]

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. Maybe don't say that thing about your body odor. Like it sort of like goes to your profile and critiques it for you. Is that what I'm hearing?

[Justin McLeod]

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. And then, you know, you fill it out. Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

Can I tell you my favorite example? One of the, one of the classic Hinge prompts is I go crazy for. And one time I saw somebody on Twitter just post I go crazy for food. And that really tells you a lot about this sort of median level of writing on these profiles. Kevin.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, got it.

[Casey Newton]

Okay, so that's kind of the setup here. Kevin now understands what an online dating profile is, and the rest of us understand that Hinge has these props, you know, which, 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. So then along comes AI and there's a tool, and Rachel, you use this tool.

[Justin McLeod]

Okay. Yeah. So I'm going to actually share a PowerPoint with you guys.

[Casey Newton]

Oh, good.

[Justin McLeod]

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

[Casey Newton]

Share for the listener. We're now in a Google Slides presentation.

[Kevin Roose]

Can I just say this is so Rachel.

[Casey Newton]

This is so. It's very Rachel. Okay, so here we're. We're. We're about to look at Rachel's original written prompts before AI intervened.

[Justin McLeod]

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. 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. 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. You are not sharing enough about yourself. Yourself.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

So it will never say go shallower. Like you're oversharing. Maybe take out that part about your childhood trauma.

[Justin McLeod]

Yes, you are going to see it will never say go shallower. It really, really loves specificity.

[Kevin Roose]

Okay, let's go, let's see.

[Justin McLeod]

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. So I got one great answer. One, try a small change. One, go deeper. We can start with my great answer because that's the one I did not change. And that's here. So the prompt was my simple pleasures. Do you guys wanna read it?

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

Correct.

[Justin McLeod]

Wow, thank you.

[Kevin Roose]

So that was that one. The AI said you killed it. No change, no notes. Yeah.

[Justin McLeod]

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

[Casey Newton]

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.

[Justin McLeod]

Okay, great. So here was my original one. I'm just going to read this one out to you. So the, the prompt was my greatest strength and my original answer was getting people to share stuff they normally wouldn't or shouldn't. This is very useful for my job, but sometimes gets me into trouble in my personal life. What do you guys think?

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Casey Newton]

I can see how maybe some people would sort of. That might rub them the wrong way. Right. Cause like dating is a little bit vulnerable and may 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, so I could see how maybe, you know, fewer people might be interested in that one.

[Justin McLeod]

I think that's a totally fair point. 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.

[Casey Newton]

But.

[Justin McLeod]

But I think, think that that's a really good point. Interestingly, that is not the thing that the AI focused on. 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. 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. 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. This makes me feel bonded to people. Like, together we share a secret.

[Kevin Roose]

That's good.

[Justin McLeod]

Well, maybe I feel like I like.

[Casey Newton]

The last one better. Really?

[Rachel Cohn]

Yes.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

Yes, exactly. As she said, it's a mechanism to filter out people. If you're opposed to salary transparency, you're not gonna enjoy going on a date with Rachel Cohn. I don't. That's just the filter that she's setting up.

[Justin McLeod]

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. 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. 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. So it's very hard to satisfy the AI and also stay within the character. So finally, here's the one that actually worked. This took me so long. I was workshopping this at a dinner with friends. My friends are like, racking their brains for, like, the kind of questions I ask. 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, and I was like, okay, I'm really just gonna tell one story. So this is what I ultimately ended up with. My greatest strength. Getting people to share stuff they normally wouldn't or shouldn't. 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.

[Casey Newton]

And how much money did he make?

[Justin McLeod]

I cannot say that.

[Casey Newton]

Wow.

[Kevin Roose]

Wow.

[Casey Newton]

You turn the tables, and all of a sudden she clams up. Okay, so this now here, for reasons that remain unknown to me, we have finally satisfied the AI and this is a great answer.

[Justin McLeod]

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

[Casey Newton]

I. No. No. Because here's the thing. I don't read that. And I think, oh, like, now I understand something about Ra. What? I understand something about a stranger you met at a wedding.

[Kevin Roose]

Do you know what I mean?

[Justin McLeod]

Yeah. Do you feel that same way, Kevin?

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, I. Well, I think it's a little better because it. It sort of conjures the. 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.

[Casey Newton]

Here's what. 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 mentally. If it makes it seem like you're constantly prying for information, that's a turn off. But if it's. I'm so sort of effervescent and bubbly, charismatic. People can't wait to tell me their secrets. Now I'm interested.

[Justin McLeod]

That's actually. That's really smart. I feel like that's not totally the truth.

[Casey Newton]

You should be a dating coach.

[Justin McLeod]

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

[Casey Newton]

All right, so we've managed to best the AI One time.

[Justin McLeod]

Okay. Yes.

[Casey Newton]

Okay, very interesting. Now let's look at the next one.

[Justin McLeod]

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

[Casey Newton]

That's cute.

[Justin McLeod]

This crushes unhinged.

[Casey Newton]

This.

[Justin McLeod]

Like, I get more responses on this than any of the other ones. So many men will send me just, like, a heart eyes emoji, or, you know, people will say, like, what book are you reading? You know, just to state the obvious here. I think part of, like, what's great about this response, it's also aspirational because.

[Kevin Roose]

Because in reality, what you're gonna do with the people that you're dating is watch TikToks and bed next to them.

[Casey Newton]

Wait, stop it, Rachel. What were you gonna say?

[Justin McLeod]

No, that's actually so fair. But, yeah, no, what I was gonna say is I think part of what works about this is that it's intentionally vague so that you, as a potential suitor for me, or whatever potential match for me, can project yourself here.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

And it gives men the opportunity to brag to you about the books that they're reading.

[Casey Newton]

Exactly.

[Kevin Roose]

That is the key piece to me.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Justin McLeod]

Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

And so how did you try to do that, Rachel?

[Justin McLeod]

All right, so it said, try adding more details about your favorite books or genres. It helps show your interests. So I actually originally changed it to, I'm looking for someone to read a historical fiction book next to in bed. 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, exclamation mark.

[Kevin Roose]

Ooh.

[Justin McLeod]

Which I feel like. I know.

[Kevin Roose]

I feel like it's so Grinch all of a sudden. I'm dating Goodreads.

[Justin McLeod]

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

[Casey Newton]

Now, see, again, 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. And I do think, as A message that a lot of online daters need to learn.

[Justin McLeod]

But.

[Casey Newton]

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.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Justin McLeod]

Thank you. I agree. I don't love this one, but here's where I ended up. That actually made the AI happy. So I ended up with. I'm looking for someone to read a historical fiction book next to. Indeed. Open to Rex, exclamation mark. Especially love stories set in New York City.

[Casey Newton]

No, no. Yeah, it's Delete.

[Kevin Roose]

It's giving LinkedIn. Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

Goodbye.

[Justin McLeod]

Okay, well, I. 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.

[Kevin Roose]

Oh, my gosh.

[Casey Newton]

Really?

[Justin McLeod]

So wait, let me show you. This next slide is responses from men, specifically onto this book one. And so 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. I love this one, too, because they didn't give me the book in the actual initial message.

[Casey Newton]

Exactly.

[Justin McLeod]

So I have to match with them to get the name of the book and then something similar here. And someone's recommending a specific book.

[Kevin Roose]

Now, I have a question about this, Rachel.

[Justin McLeod]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

So my. My presumption is that some of the men on dating apps are also using AI to craft their responses. 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?

[Justin McLeod]

I would say that I personally do not think I have come across many people who are using AI, and there are a few reasons that I feel that way. One is that the grammar is horrible, horrible, horrible.

[Kevin Roose]

Also, just.

[Justin McLeod]

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.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, well, I mean, I mean, these are both, you know, really good responses. They're very engaging. 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. So that was smart. Now, Rachel, I'm seeing in this screenshot that your battery was all the way down at 19%. Do you usually let it get that low?

[Justin McLeod]

Actually, my battery's at 3% in that other one. Y. This is a huge complaint amongst my friends is that my phone is always dying and I refuse to invest in a.

[Kevin Roose]

Can we get you a battery pack?

[Casey Newton]

Yeah, that's. That's my. That's our Valentine's Day presenting you a battery pack.

[Justin McLeod]

That would actually.

[Casey Newton]

So let's. Let's keep going. What else did we learn?

[Kevin Roose]

What is your overall impression of this AI feature? Did it. 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 to.

[Justin McLeod]

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. It does not understand all these important features about, like, you know, being sort of mysterious and dating. But actually, now that I went through the process and did have more people engaging me, I do have this sense that 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. 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. 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 reason that you're coached to do that. The reason is that, like, for, you know, 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? I think the same is true in dating to some extent.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, that makes sense. 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. 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. I think it, at a. 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? Like you were maybe, I don't know, giving over this very personal thing to an AI that doesn't actually know you that well.

[Justin McLeod]

So, I mean, I think that this was actually something smart that Hinge clearly, very intentionally did. Like, part of what makes the tool not that helpful, but also what prevents exactly. What you're talking about is they don't actually tell you. Like, here's what you should say. Instead, 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. 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. Minutes of tweaking and rewriting and, you know, like, that. That's a huge time commitment. And, yeah, it was. It was really hard to satisfy the AI.

[Casey Newton]

What I'm curious about is what will be the experience of the median hinge user? 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? But when I think about all the Hinge profiles that I used to see of these guys and, you know, be like, what are your interests? And it would be coffee, food, and Trav. And I thought, I don't know one thing about you. Like, obviously you like food. Like, we all eat it every day, right? 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?

[Justin McLeod]

So this is, like, my big question that I am really hoping you guys will push Justin, the CEO of Hinge, on with, which is like, exactly. They have marketed this tool especially, like, to investors, at least as a tool for struggling daters. What do we know about struggling daters? They either don't put much time and effort into their profile, or they are not sort of comfortable putting themselves out there. 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 ready, what do I order for the table? Pizza. I think that is an intentional choice.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

Well, Rachel, this is a fascinating experiment, and thank you for walking us through it. If people want to date you, how can they get in touch?

[Justin McLeod]

Actually, they could check out my newsletter and write to me there.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes, it's a very good newsletter, and if any hard fork listeners want to go check it out, and maybe shoot their shot on Hinge. They can find you there, too.

[Casey Newton]

Thank you so much, Rachel.

[Justin McLeod]

Thank you.

[Casey Newton]

Happy Valentine's Day.

[Justin McLeod]

Happy Valentine's Day.

[Casey Newton]

Okay. Well, Kevin, a lot hinges on our next segment. Yeah, Hinge CEO Justin McLoud is here.

[Kevin Roose]

That's when we come back.

[Justin McLeod]

And now a next level moment from ATT Business. Say you've sent out a gigantic shipment of pillows, and they need to be.

[Rachel Cohn]

There in time for International Sleep day. You've got AT and T5G, so you're.

[Justin McLeod]

Fully confident, but the vendor isn't responding.

[Rachel Cohn]

And International Sleep Day is tomorrow.

[Justin McLeod]

Luckily, AT&T 5G lets you deal with any issues with ease.

[Rachel Cohn]

So the pillows will get delivered and.

[Justin McLeod]

Everyone can sleep soundly, especially you.

[Rachel Cohn]

AT&T 5G requires a compatible plan and device coverage not available everywhere. Learn [e-mail] 5G Network.

[Casey Newton]

I'm Anna Martin.

[Kevin Roose]

The host of the Modern Love podcast.

[Casey Newton]

In every episode, we peek into an intimate corner of someone's life and learn.

[Kevin Roose]

About what love means to them. You know, I can tell you, 35 years with another person, I've never spent that much time with anyone else either. So we both kind of said, I love you pretty fast.

[Casey Newton]

My advice is that it's okay if it's hard.

[Kevin Roose]

You can listen to Modern Love wherever you get your podcasts.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, let's get a little unhinged.

[Casey Newton]

He'll be joining us from the McLoud. All right.

[Rachel Cohn]

All right.

[Kevin Roose]

Justin McLeod, welcome to Hard Fork.

[Rachel Cohn]

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

[Casey Newton]

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, like. Is this, like, tax season over at Hinge for you guys?

[Rachel Cohn]

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. So it's a bit of a tricky love hate relationship with Valentine's Day for an inch.

[Casey Newton]

I'll tell you a story, which is that when I was single, I had a friend who is like, look, if you're gonna find somebody, you have to, like, subscribe to the premium version of one of these dating apps. So I actually bought Tinder Premium on Valentine's Day. And like every year for like, you know, three or four years, it would renew on Valentine's Day.

[Rachel Cohn]

You get the renewal.

[Casey Newton]

Exactly. And it was always just a reminder that I hadn't quite yet figured things. So in that way, Valentine's Day was big. Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Rachel Cohn]

Oh, I mean, we could take the whole podcast, the story. It's a long one. Well, I married my college sweetheart, but we had a eight year break where we didn't speak to each other. And I started Hinge during that, during that period, about halfway through that, that period. And I let her know, I included her on all the launch emails and.

[Casey Newton]

Just to be like, hey, just in case anyone is asking, you know, I'm still wink, wink.

[Rachel Cohn]

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 and. Yeah. And actually we just had our eight year wedding anniversary yesterday.

[Casey Newton]

Wow. Happy anniversary.

[Kevin Roose]

Happy anniversary.

[Rachel Cohn]

Thank you.

[Casey Newton]

You.

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

Yes. And I've only ever had an experience of. Of AI trying to break up my relationship. But you all think that you can use AI to help people get into relationships. So tell us about the overall picture you see of how AI and dating apps are poised to intersect.

[Rachel Cohn]

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. 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. And there are a couple big ways that I think this is really going to come to life. One is personalized matching, and two is effective coaching. 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 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 you're misaligned on your goals and expectations.

[Kevin Roose]

The alignment problem, no, that's something else.

[Rachel Cohn]

Right. 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 a much more nuanced feedback. 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. Is it the photos they chose? Is it the prompts they're writing and we can help push people and guide people to, 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, you know.

[Casey Newton]

So those are the two potentially useful approaches. Maybe let's take them in order a little bit. 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. 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. What are those next two or three layers? What are the other signals that you could glean and what makes you confident that they would paint a picture of somebody that was actually useful in connecting them to somebody else?

[Rachel Cohn]

Yeah, so there's a number of different ways to think about this. First of all, when Hinge launched back in, 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. 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. It was a lot of you guys are technical, so collaborative filtering kind of models as opposed to content based. 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. So that's one layer. We can start to ask much more nuanced questions that don't always fit into an easy, easy multi select dropdown option of like, what is your religion? Or what's your height? 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. 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? 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 relationships. Relationship 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.

[Casey Newton]

Right. 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, isn't 90% of them just whether you think they look cute in their photos? Like, is there really that much deeper left to plumb with AI and all the rest?

[Rachel Cohn]

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. 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. And that's why I think Hinge has been so successful, because we haven't really based it on photos. 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. 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 recruiting out to looks.

[Casey Newton]

Got it.

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Rachel Cohn]

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. Journey. We're starting with the tips and tools. So that's things like a photo finder. 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. 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 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, which is pretty transformative.

[Casey Newton]

So I want to understand a little bit about how you built this system and what it is looking for. 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. So I'm guessing that's kind of one of the criteria. Are there others? 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.

[Rachel Cohn]

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. Does it reveal something about you? It is largely pushing people towards bit more specificity when they respond.

[Casey Newton]

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 more, meet more people.

[Rachel Cohn]

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 like what types of questions actually lead to people responding in a way that leads to a date. 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. 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 going to.

[Casey Newton]

That's a lot to post online for everyone to see.

[Rachel Cohn]

Yeah, exactly. 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 and where is the point that actually lets other people in and it's what other people want to know.

[Kevin Roose]

Right now I have a question about sort of this use of AI for improving one's profile or maybe pointing out where your answers are a little generic, which is that if everyone is using this stuff, doesn't that kind of flatten the landscape? Doesn't that actually. Because part of what you're doing when you're trying to look for people on an app like Hinge is to filter out people as well as filtering them in to your set of potential matches. 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. 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?

[Rachel Cohn]

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. 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? 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. Or just represent yourself. 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.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, I mean, I guess to me, it feels a little bit like using AI to do sort of the personality equivalent of airbrushing a photo. It's like, here's the AI that's gonna make you seem a little more original, a little more creative, a little more charming than you maybe, actually would be on your own. But maybe I'm being too cynical.

[Rachel Cohn]

But that's the principle between coaching and giving people the answers. Right. We're not like, you write a prompt answer and we're like, hey, use this one instead. We're just saying, hey, could you say a little bit more about that?

[Casey Newton]

Yeah.

[Rachel Cohn]

And that, I think, is the. 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.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

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. You want to stand out from the pack, not be like, you know, all the other guys. On the other hand, you wanted to seem normal, approachable, like a recognizable kind of person that some. Somebody might want to go and have a drink with. 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. 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, or are there moments where it's going to say, it looks like you're confessing to a felony in this prompt? We may want to walk that back.

[Rachel Cohn]

I don't know about that. That latter one. So our goal is to bring out the uniqueness in people. And that's why, again, we're so conscious about 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 and it can be used to make everyone the same and tell everyone to put the same thing in the box, or it can be used to really find out what's unique about you and bring that out. And I think that that is certainly the better formula for Hinge, because people are unique, people are different, and we want to help them showcase that.

[Casey Newton]

Yeah.

[Kevin Roose]

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. 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 of these scammers who will pretend to be interested in you. They'll send you some flirty messages, maybe they'll even strike up a relationship with you, and then they'll tell you, I can help you make money trading crypto or something. 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?

[Rachel Cohn]

That's, I mean, another big advantage I think of AI is like our. We have a very big and dedicated trust and safety team, and we don't see that as a big problem on Hinge because we really do catch people. 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.

[Casey Newton]

I want to talk about the potential use of AI in the actual conversations. 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 hindrance Tinder.

[Kevin Roose]

Right.

[Casey Newton]

It's like hi Hi, how are you? Good, good. How are you? I'm. How was your weekend? It was fine. How was yours? Right, and you just repeat that like ad infinitum. 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. I could also imagine somebody like you saying, well, I don't know if I actually want the AI to be sending the messages. So how are you thinking about letting AI do more of the writing for your users over time?

[Rachel Cohn]

Well, it's the principle of coaching, so we don't want to write for our users. 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. On Hinge, you actually have to like something about them and you can add a comment. And you have very rich profiles. And there's a lot of opportunity for us to help coach people to engage with a piece of content on someone's profile, whether it's a prompt or a photo. And that's something else that we are exploring and we actually plan to start testing next quarter, is helping give people conversation starters. Again, Not. 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. 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.

[Casey Newton]

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 on red. Is something going on with. With you, Kevin?

[Rachel Cohn]

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. 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. 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. 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.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Rachel Cohn]

Thank you. It was one of the few positive Reddit threads. You almost never see those. And it was like, wow, this feature is really amazing. 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, nevermind, this feature is amazing. And we saw a response and has increased by like 20, 30%.

[Casey Newton]

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. But this, 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. 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. So that strikes me as a really good example of a feature that essentially, 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.

[Kevin Roose]

Yes, 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. The founder of Bumble Whitney Wolf Herd 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 on to an app for you and dates other users, AI concierges and says, you know, basically let's, let's go on a date as proxies for these two real people and maybe see if they would be compatible. Grindr 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? Are you at all excited about the use of AI agents to date on users behalf?

[Rachel Cohn]

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. And that means that we are not in a world where you are being replaced by agents who are dating on your behalf. The journey of dating is something that I think we each do need to take on our, on our own. But having again, the, the coaching and the nudging can be very, very helpful to people. 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.

[Casey Newton]

Totally. I hear a story like that. I'm like, like this is just like science fiction that you're telling your shareholders so that your stock price goes up. Like, obviously those tools don't exist. Maybe they would exist. Maybe some people would like them.

[Kevin Roose]

I mean, I've already out the ChatGPT operator having it drive their online dating profile. So I don't think this is science fiction. Now, whether it's good or not is a different.

[Rachel Cohn]

Yeah. Whether it's going to lead to the result you want, I think is the. Is the question. And I. And we're trying to get people out on dates with people that they're actually going to like.

[Casey Newton]

Justin, I wonder if you could give a bit, a little bit of a pep talk to users of yours, like Rachel, who, Who are out there. They're using their AI prompts. They're. They're not ghosting on their matches. They're showing up for these dates. It hasn't happened for them yet. 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?

[Rachel Cohn]

For me, it was a shift in mentality. 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. And I, I think that a lot of us miss a one, maybe the one, because we have such a specific idea of what this has to be. And it's like we're shopping for the perfect person. And when I created Hinge the first time, it was go through as many people as possible, and as soon as you find the one, then everything just works from there. And the interesting experience that I had when I got my one back, the one I dreamed about was like, oh, the one that got away from college. 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. But we stuck, you know, we stuck with it, obviously, for 10 years now. And 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, 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.

[Casey Newton]

That's really beautiful. You know, I find myself asking the question, and I don't know that I 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? 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. But, um, 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.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah, you gotta.

[Casey Newton]

Got that. You gotta get there.

[Rachel Cohn]

Yeah. It's a journey for everyone.

[Kevin Roose]

But Casey has a boyfriend.

[Casey Newton]

He's very handsome.

[Kevin Roose]

He often brings it up. By often, I mean several times an episode. He.

[Casey Newton]

It's a Valentine's Day episode. People want to hear about love, and.

[Kevin Roose]

We are thrilled for Casey.

[Casey Newton]

It's an inspiration, inspiring storyfriend. Thank you.

[Kevin Roose]

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

[Casey Newton]

But I was on Hedge. I was. I was ready to meet him anywhere.

[Kevin Roose]

Yeah.

[Casey Newton]

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

[Kevin Roose]

And if Casey can find someone, you can too.

[Casey Newton]

Amen.

[Kevin Roose]

All right, thank you so much.

[Casey Newton]

Thank you, Justin.

[Rachel Cohn]

Thanks for having me.

[Casey Newton]

Hard Fork is produced by Rachel Cohn and Whitney Jones, were edited this week by Rachel Dry and were fact checked by Caitlin Love. Today's show was engineered by Chris Wood. Original music by Marian Lozano, Rowan Nimisto and Dan Powell. Our executive producer is Jen Poyan. Our audience editor is Nell Gillogli.

[Rachel Cohn]

Vicky.

[Casey Newton]

Video production by Sawyer Roque, Pat Gunther and Chris Schott. You can watch this whole episode on [e-mail] hardfork Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Pui Wingtam, Dalia Haddad and Jeffrey Miranda. You can email [e-mail] with what's on your dating profile.