Tinder wants AI to set you up on a date

When I first met Sean Rad, back in 2013, Tinder
was a blossoming dating app. It was known
primarily for, how shall I put it, casual
relationships.
Back then he told me Tinder was “good for
humanity”, a line I instantly latched onto as being
faintly ridiculous, and wonderful for a headline.
But now when I think of how Tinder has
impacted my life, and those of several people
close to me, I start to see what he was getting
at.
Life-changing things have happened to millions
of people thanks to that simple swipe-yes-swipe-
no interface.
I know people who have married their Tinder
matches. I know many others who are in serious
relationships. And yes, I know many people who
have had casual hook-ups and one-night stands.
Yet why that last point is seen as a negative to
be joked about I’ll never know. People have been
doing that in bars for well over 100 years.
Anyway, Tinder is growing up. It’s now a serious
technology company tackling one of life’s most
important matters, and is by far the most
popular dating app worldwide.
After a lot of boardroom musical chairs , Mr Rad
is the chairman of both Tinder and Swipe
Ventures, the arm of the company designed to
buy other dating-related technologies.
One of which is artificial intelligence. And its
collision with dating might be the most intriguing
application of AI yet.
“I think this might sound crazy,” Mr Rad said on
Tuesday at tech conference Start-Up Grind.
"In five years time, Tinder might be so good, you
might be like “Hey [Apple voice assistant] Siri,
what’s happening tonight?’
“And Tinder might pop up and say 'There’s
someone down the street you might be attracted
to. She’s also attracted to you. She’s free
tomorrow night. We know you both like the same
band, and it’s playing - would you like us to buy
you tickets?’… and you have a match.
"It’s a little scary."
Also a little lazy, you might say. Part of the
dating process is surely assessing someone’s
tastes and idea of fun. If that’s taken out of the
equation, it’s a lot harder to understand a
person.
Still, even though it can be difficult to admit,
dating really is a numbers game, and right now
the data Tinder uses is primitive: age, location
and mutual friends - as well as a few mutual
interests as defined by what you “like” on
Facebook. Why not add a few parameters and
make it even more likely you will click?
Traffic light party
Anyone who has been a student will know about
“traffic light parties” (or stoplights if you’re an
American). A hideous concept in which you go
on a night out dressed in either red, amber or
green. Red means “in a relationship and happy”.
Green means “single and looking”. Amber means
you’re a bad human being.
The idea is that two “greens” can find each
other easily. Quite why anyone would go as a
“red” is anyone’s guess.
Now, this works (in theory) on university
campuses. But such a system would be bedlam
in the real world - particularly on St Patrick’s
Day, I'd imagine.
But you have to admit, a way of knowing
someone’s relationship status without having to
ask would be a very useful tool. Indeed, it’s what
made Facebook popular in its early days.
Mr Rad sees a time when Tinder could offer a
form of real-life traffic party through augmented
reality.
AR is the technology that overlays digital images
onto the real world as you walk around. So far
the only truly popular application of it has been
Pokemon Go, which, while bringing people
together, isn’t the relationship fast-track most
people are presumably looking for.
But what if you could use AR to meet potential
partners?
"That will definitely impact dating,” Mr Rad said,
noting Tinder is popular for so many people
because it allows us to show interest in a person
without the fear of rejection.
"You can imagine how, with augmented reality,
that experience could happen in the room, in real
time. The impact is profound as these devices
get closer to your senses, to your eyes, to your
experiences.”
That might make you deeply uncomfortable. I
don't blame you. As ever, it will be up to
technology companies - not just Tinder - to roll
out such ideas in way that doesn’t encroach on
privacy, or indeed, common decency and
manners. The key word here is, as always,
consent.
Tinder’s future lives and breathes on its ability to
remain the most popular app for getting people
together and into relationships. More recently,
rival services like Bumble have shown signs of
disrupting Tinder’s dominance. Bumble’s key
selling point is the fact women have to initiate
the conversations.
But there’s plenty of market to go round. Tinder
now has a far more global focus, Mr Rad said,
with approximately 600 million smartphone-toting
single people ready to find The One.