I mean, it's scary even to those of us that know what's going on. Some just choose to turn a blind eye to how dumb and destructive the current iterations and implementations of AI still are.
What precisely is dumb and destructive about the vaswani attention paper?
I have lived in northern Virginia since 2017, aka “the cloud”
We already had years and years of data center development long before the transformer paper came out, capitalism was already destroying basically everything it could with no brakes on it since 1971
Explain to me how the fuck exactly that’s an algorithms fault
Dating apps are really good for women, particularly young women. Several of my women friends have said they can have a decent partner for an evening or a weekend with as little as 30 mins of time investment.
I don't think it was particularly hard for young women to hook up pre-dating-apps.
If we're saying dating apps are actually only hookup apps, that's a different story. However everyone, including the apps themselves, sees them as a way, or more commonly these days, the only way, to find long-term love. They are two different problems and the latter shouldn't involve apps.
In any case this is a non-sequitur. Recreational kickball isn't a dating app.
I don't think it's possible legally to "ban technology" from the dating space. "Dating apps should not exist" was aspirational, not a call for a legal ban.
Finding a partner was never free, even if no money was involved, at least one of the partners has to invest and demonstrate the resilience and commitment, that involves time and often also money like paying the bar tab for the date in the simplest case.
(and yes, I found my wife by paying for a membership in a dating app. We wouldn't meet otherwise even though we lived in the same city)
> Finding a partner was never free, even if no money was involved,
That's just pedantry, sorry. It's obvious that forming a relationship has non-monetary costs. And the bar tab for the date is the cost of drinks and food. That's the value you receive for the money you spend. Not companionship, or the chance of companionship.
Dates can be a simple walk in the park or on the beach - no spending necessary. That may not land with every potential partner. Some of them will want you to spend, or even spend big, on dates. But then that's also a natural filter of its own, if you want it to be.
The drinks and food are obviously secondary to the point of the spend in that case though.
It's not pedantry at all. An app is just another option to find someone. You may not like that option, for other people it might even be the only realistic one.
> The drinks and food are obviously secondary to the point of the spend in that case though.
Spending on drinks and food is never required to have the date. It makes the date good but it isn't what makes the date possible. You're going to eat anyway, you may as well eat with someone.
> An app is just another option to find someone
And "find someone" is an activity that largely hasn't cost money for all but the last 15 years of human existence. Relying on apps to make dates possible is dangerous.
> You may not like that option, for other people it might even be the only realistic one
We should examine why that is, or if it's even true. People have never had trouble pairing up before. Or at least, not troubles that have gone away in the dating app era. From the data it isn't obvious that dating apps make the process of partner-finding better - everyone sounds miserable, long-term relationship formation is down. Skepticism about technology that costs money, doesn't even work, and reduces happiness is warranted.
I respect your resilience to route around the points I'm trying to make. But being a contrarian for the sake of it isn't a good way to engage in fruitful discussions.
> And "find someone" is an activity that largely hasn't cost money for all but the last 15 years of human existence.
That's completely false. Courtship involved money since forever (and also paid dating apps are older than 15 years).
> People have never had trouble pairing up before.
And dating apps have eliminated these problems? I posit that the old problems remain and dating apps have added new ones on top.
> Courtship involved money since forever
Courtship required, or at least benefited from, demonstrable financial stability. Because that's an attractive quality in a mate for many people. But that's no different from saying "Courtship involved looks|religion|health/fertility since forever".
Courtship didn't previously require paying an intermediary to engage in. There's a distinction here that you either can't or don't want to understand.
> also paid dating apps are older than 15 years
But only in the last 15 years have they taken over dating.
Dating apps were fine before the Silicon Valley DAU-maxxing, microtransaction-to-IPO pipeline obssessed twerps entered the picture.
Before swipes, before "buy Premium to un-hide these people who like you" paywalls, dating apps let you message people directly in exchange for showing some Google ads that were unobtrusive.
No surprise at all that an out-of-touch, billionnaire CEO thinks that the missing ingredient is AI.
On dating apps, men will always be the customer and women are the product. You cannot fix this asymmetry due to how attraction works and the risks involved between men and women. Ironically Instagram is 'the' dating app as you can vet people better and see if they have any social proof. Real life skips a lot of the BS altogether.
I can't ever see anything improving. They will just learn how to manipulate men further into paying, where you suddenly get swarmed with likes then get nothing for a period then get swarmed again so you remain hooked and eventually pay.
I find it interesting that this niche manages to survive, and that the most common takes are attacks on the gimmicks rather than the quality of the people signing up.
The last time any dating apps were "good" was when they weren't apps, but websites. People on these sites back then weren't really trying to optimize for anything. Many were honest and had realistic expectations. It was considered a bit loserish because it's the digital version of the want ads. Of course, everyone likes piña coladas.
Dating websites were the less exhausting alternative to going out drinking or finding new social circles. People understood that low risk meant low reward, but hey it was either that or no date at all.
In other words, this was always a pretty bad scene. What changed is the marketing angle more poised to take advantage of the naive. Making it shiny because computers isn't really working anymore. It's crazy it ever did.
I continue to be furious at how Match destroyed OkCupid. OkC of the 2010s was a fantastic and rich community full of interesting people. I met my wife there. I learned about Polyamory from the message boards. Now they've ripped out everything that ever made it good, it's just another Tinderlike
> Dating websites were the less exhausting alternative to going out drinking or finding new social circles
The per-event odds of finding love by going out drinking and joining new social circles are low. But the odds of making some great memories and good friends in the process are pretty high*. At least better compared to the alternative of sitting at home and swiping on an app.
Its a little bit of a balance act, they want to match you with someone that's good enough to date a couple times but not enough to date long term.
I think the mathematics work better if they match you with "mostly compatible" people rather than "not compatible at all". Success stories are important because that's how you build recognition.
Now a days though, match group owns all dating apps so they have a monopoly in dating. Whenever a new app comes to market that's "better" (which will be, in its initial stages) they acquire. Users migrate and then they ruin. Rinse and repeat.
They recently acquired sniffies (a gay cruising app) for like 100M. Go figure.
I've looked into match group before, they're the usual suspects (Blackrock, Vanguard) and practice lawfare. If you don't take their buyout (like how bumble refused) then they try to sue you with software patents which I thought were all basically invalidated in Alice v. CLS Bank. But yeah, they're not a nice group of people who want to match you up. They're in it for money. And the way match group operates makes others reluctant to enter the market, unless they are just looking for a big buyout payday.
1. There's a steady stream of unmarried individuals so as you match people up there's more people (either just from growing older or divorce) that can use the app.
2. If you don't already own a dating app, then even if you cannibalize the market you can still make a large sum of money. Akin to mining all the gold in a plot of land; sure your company needs to close once its gone but you made money in the interium.
2.5. If you do already own a dating app, if you're known for not working then people will stop using the app and go to a competitor (assuming you didn't buy them all ...)
Facebook apparently already has a dating app. I've heard anecdotally it is much better than the match group apps, maybe for older age ranges? I'm married and haven't used dating sites in over 20 years.
In theory the 'knows people you know' thing is a good vetting system for finding people to date though.
That is only the case if people enter exclusive relationships. But if someone has access to a dating app or system that works really well, there is little reason to do that.
Breeze has a really cool formula in which you pay exclusively for each date. And a date is organised automatically for each match, without any possibility to chat beforehand.
Not exactly, you only have a very limited amount of profiles visible every day. About 4, though maybe it depends on the location. So there is no endless swiping. You also cannot match anyone else until you have set up a date with your last match, and if you opt out too many times (again, probably three or four) your account gets blocked.
In any case, you only pay for dates you go to (unless you cancel at the last moment). Their incentive is to send you to as many dates as possible.
Coffee Meets Bagels tried that. A few matches at 12PM every day.
I think the key problem for dating apps is that 90% of women on it will only match with the top 10% of men. Meanwhile, most men will try to match with anything that has a nose and eyes.
I don't think Breeze's concept fixes that since it's still up to the girl to match.
Why does it? I'm curious. I think it solves most of the issues of the traditional apps. (But yes, I didn't mention a fundamental aspect: they propose you only a very limited amount of profiles each day, no endless swiping: if you don't fancy any of your daily ~4, tough luck, you can come back tomorrow).
You don't. You go to the date (in a public place, set by the app) and if there's something fishy about them you can report them to the app (there's an explicit feedback request after each date).
Ooh, you lost $12! And your date did too, and probably the account as well. As for the risk of getting murdered, I think it's unavoidable in any app (and in life in general) but probably worse if you organise the date by yourself.
This does absolutely nothing to address the underlying social, economic, and ideological reasons why new relationship formation is struggling so much, especially with Gen Z. It's not a technological problem, in other words.
I won't go into my personal explanations here as I'll just be downvoted into oblivion (there are other forums for that discussion) but I will say this: without men and women having reasons to be in relationships--especially long-term reasons--then relationships won't happen. It's proving easier to get our needs met outside of relationships.
> without men and women having reasons to be in relationships--especially long-term reasons--then relationships won't happen.
I'm actually fine with this. I'm not sure I want to be around the same person constantly for longer than a few years and I'm glad modern life allows me to do that. Leaving my family when I became an adult was the best thing I ever did.
I'm sure someone out there's thinking or about to say "families are the basis of a stable society" and that's incorrect. The basis of a stable society is having enough money. Without that, families are simply going to be a performative thing to satisfy angry people and/or busybodies.
I presume they’ll do something more akin to coffee meets bagel where you have X amount of people per day to choose to interact with. There’s not really much AI in all that. That’s been around for a decade+.
Hinge is the behemoth and it’s practically how everyone in the UMC and in rich cities meets now after college. It’s unsettling how few serious relationships I meet have been made in some other way (or even a different app) in recent years. Again, college is the big one but if you’re single after college then it seems you’re going to have to meet through Hinge. It’s hard to meet anyone who is serious in any other way.
Relationship pairing is overall down across the board though. Looksism is at its all time high and I think will continue to be even more dominant than it already has. I’ve seen the culture shift quite drastically over the last ten years. The idea of dating someone for their personality and completely ignoring their looks is well dead and gone at this point. No one even trying to keep up the facade that most everything in your dating prospects is dictated by your superficial traits.
When y'all get tired of this faffing about: pursue a suitable community of faith; date an actual person of the opposite gender until Destiny (and other wise eyes) indicate a match; marry, and let two be a large value of one; have or adopt some children; enjoy the fullness of life in all its seasons.
The old formula has endured and shan't be supplanted by these fancy gizmos.
The problem is that doesn't actually work. I've spent my entire life active in communities of faith and that certainly has never involved, helped with, or facilitated a date let alone a long term relationship.
I find that so incredibly hard to believe, in my experience it's like the primary purpose of people in relationships past a certain age is to play matchmaker.
It seems inevitable if you are consistently around people and known to be single that they will try to set you up with *someone.
Church is one of the worst places to try to date and that’s not the purpose. The only purpose of church is worship, not socialization or politics or pushing an agenda or judgment
> Church is one of the worst places to try to date and that’s not the purpose
This is surprising to me. I'd think churches would be overjoyed about congregants dating, getting married, and having children (who then go on to attend church).
> The only purpose of church is worship, not socialization or politics or pushing an agenda or judgment
> Bumble says it will ditch swiping features in favor of AI-powered matchmaking
This should be the title
They're recommender systems already, which is AI-powered, so how exactly are they changing?
People are aware of it now
So they don’t like it because “AI” is scary to ignorant people
I mean, it's scary even to those of us that know what's going on. Some just choose to turn a blind eye to how dumb and destructive the current iterations and implementations of AI still are.
What precisely is dumb and destructive about the vaswani attention paper?
I have lived in northern Virginia since 2017, aka “the cloud”
We already had years and years of data center development long before the transformer paper came out, capitalism was already destroying basically everything it could with no brakes on it since 1971
Explain to me how the fuck exactly that’s an algorithms fault
Indeed, I initially thought this was about a dating app called Swipe.
There would be no confusion if every word wasn't capitalized
Dating apps shouldn't exist. Period.
No good can come from letting a company become load-bearing in an activity humans were able to do for free since time immemorial - find a partner.
(Yes I'm aware some traditional societies had/have professional matchmakers)
Dating apps are really good for women, particularly young women. Several of my women friends have said they can have a decent partner for an evening or a weekend with as little as 30 mins of time investment.
I don't think it was particularly hard for young women to hook up pre-dating-apps.
If we're saying dating apps are actually only hookup apps, that's a different story. However everyone, including the apps themselves, sees them as a way, or more commonly these days, the only way, to find long-term love. They are two different problems and the latter shouldn't involve apps.
So we should ban recreational kickball?
Seems foolish to me to ban technology from dating given how much time people invest into it.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize"
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
In any case this is a non-sequitur. Recreational kickball isn't a dating app.
I don't think it's possible legally to "ban technology" from the dating space. "Dating apps should not exist" was aspirational, not a call for a legal ban.
We are already banning scammers wherever we can. What is a difference between dating app and a scam? I can't see any.
Finding a partner was never free, even if no money was involved, at least one of the partners has to invest and demonstrate the resilience and commitment, that involves time and often also money like paying the bar tab for the date in the simplest case.
(and yes, I found my wife by paying for a membership in a dating app. We wouldn't meet otherwise even though we lived in the same city)
> Finding a partner was never free, even if no money was involved,
That's just pedantry, sorry. It's obvious that forming a relationship has non-monetary costs. And the bar tab for the date is the cost of drinks and food. That's the value you receive for the money you spend. Not companionship, or the chance of companionship.
Dates can be a simple walk in the park or on the beach - no spending necessary. That may not land with every potential partner. Some of them will want you to spend, or even spend big, on dates. But then that's also a natural filter of its own, if you want it to be.
The drinks and food are obviously secondary to the point of the spend in that case though.
It's not pedantry at all. An app is just another option to find someone. You may not like that option, for other people it might even be the only realistic one.
> The drinks and food are obviously secondary to the point of the spend in that case though.
Spending on drinks and food is never required to have the date. It makes the date good but it isn't what makes the date possible. You're going to eat anyway, you may as well eat with someone.
> An app is just another option to find someone
And "find someone" is an activity that largely hasn't cost money for all but the last 15 years of human existence. Relying on apps to make dates possible is dangerous.
> You may not like that option, for other people it might even be the only realistic one
We should examine why that is, or if it's even true. People have never had trouble pairing up before. Or at least, not troubles that have gone away in the dating app era. From the data it isn't obvious that dating apps make the process of partner-finding better - everyone sounds miserable, long-term relationship formation is down. Skepticism about technology that costs money, doesn't even work, and reduces happiness is warranted.
I respect your resilience to route around the points I'm trying to make. But being a contrarian for the sake of it isn't a good way to engage in fruitful discussions.
> And "find someone" is an activity that largely hasn't cost money for all but the last 15 years of human existence.
That's completely false. Courtship involved money since forever (and also paid dating apps are older than 15 years).
> People have never had trouble pairing up before.
People have always had trouble pairing up.
> People have always had trouble pairing up.
And dating apps have eliminated these problems? I posit that the old problems remain and dating apps have added new ones on top.
> Courtship involved money since forever
Courtship required, or at least benefited from, demonstrable financial stability. Because that's an attractive quality in a mate for many people. But that's no different from saying "Courtship involved looks|religion|health/fertility since forever".
Courtship didn't previously require paying an intermediary to engage in. There's a distinction here that you either can't or don't want to understand.
> also paid dating apps are older than 15 years
But only in the last 15 years have they taken over dating.
Dating apps were fine before the Silicon Valley DAU-maxxing, microtransaction-to-IPO pipeline obssessed twerps entered the picture.
Before swipes, before "buy Premium to un-hide these people who like you" paywalls, dating apps let you message people directly in exchange for showing some Google ads that were unobtrusive.
No surprise at all that an out-of-touch, billionnaire CEO thinks that the missing ingredient is AI.
That's the inevitable fate of any dating app. The entire category has a flawed premise.
On dating apps, men will always be the customer and women are the product. You cannot fix this asymmetry due to how attraction works and the risks involved between men and women. Ironically Instagram is 'the' dating app as you can vet people better and see if they have any social proof. Real life skips a lot of the BS altogether.
I can't ever see anything improving. They will just learn how to manipulate men further into paying, where you suddenly get swarmed with likes then get nothing for a period then get swarmed again so you remain hooked and eventually pay.
I find it interesting that this niche manages to survive, and that the most common takes are attacks on the gimmicks rather than the quality of the people signing up.
The last time any dating apps were "good" was when they weren't apps, but websites. People on these sites back then weren't really trying to optimize for anything. Many were honest and had realistic expectations. It was considered a bit loserish because it's the digital version of the want ads. Of course, everyone likes piña coladas.
Dating websites were the less exhausting alternative to going out drinking or finding new social circles. People understood that low risk meant low reward, but hey it was either that or no date at all.
In other words, this was always a pretty bad scene. What changed is the marketing angle more poised to take advantage of the naive. Making it shiny because computers isn't really working anymore. It's crazy it ever did.
I continue to be furious at how Match destroyed OkCupid. OkC of the 2010s was a fantastic and rich community full of interesting people. I met my wife there. I learned about Polyamory from the message boards. Now they've ripped out everything that ever made it good, it's just another Tinderlike
> Dating websites were the less exhausting alternative to going out drinking or finding new social circles
The per-event odds of finding love by going out drinking and joining new social circles are low. But the odds of making some great memories and good friends in the process are pretty high*. At least better compared to the alternative of sitting at home and swiping on an app.
* There's an entire TV show based on this premise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_I_Met_Your_Mother
Dating apps don't have incentive to match you up. When they do, they lose a customer.
Its a little bit of a balance act, they want to match you with someone that's good enough to date a couple times but not enough to date long term.
I think the mathematics work better if they match you with "mostly compatible" people rather than "not compatible at all". Success stories are important because that's how you build recognition.
Now a days though, match group owns all dating apps so they have a monopoly in dating. Whenever a new app comes to market that's "better" (which will be, in its initial stages) they acquire. Users migrate and then they ruin. Rinse and repeat.
They recently acquired sniffies (a gay cruising app) for like 100M. Go figure.
I've looked into match group before, they're the usual suspects (Blackrock, Vanguard) and practice lawfare. If you don't take their buyout (like how bumble refused) then they try to sue you with software patents which I thought were all basically invalidated in Alice v. CLS Bank. But yeah, they're not a nice group of people who want to match you up. They're in it for money. And the way match group operates makes others reluctant to enter the market, unless they are just looking for a big buyout payday.
There's 3 glaring problems here.
1. There's a steady stream of unmarried individuals so as you match people up there's more people (either just from growing older or divorce) that can use the app.
2. If you don't already own a dating app, then even if you cannibalize the market you can still make a large sum of money. Akin to mining all the gold in a plot of land; sure your company needs to close once its gone but you made money in the interium.
2.5. If you do already own a dating app, if you're known for not working then people will stop using the app and go to a competitor (assuming you didn't buy them all ...)
I actually think a Facebook or Instagram might be in the best position to offer dating with the goal of permanent matching.
* Recruit friends to make recommendations mimics classic searching techniques
* Can scope out a more complete bio early in the process, for both AI and Human filtering/matching
* Their long term incentives will be meet if they post cute couple pictures or generate new long term users
Facebook apparently already has a dating app. I've heard anecdotally it is much better than the match group apps, maybe for older age ranges? I'm married and haven't used dating sites in over 20 years.
In theory the 'knows people you know' thing is a good vetting system for finding people to date though.
LinkedIn is. But they won't do it.
Just what we need, Microsoft to suck the joy out of another aspect of our life.
That is only the case if people enter exclusive relationships. But if someone has access to a dating app or system that works really well, there is little reason to do that.
Breeze has a really cool formula in which you pay exclusively for each date. And a date is organised automatically for each match, without any possibility to chat beforehand.
You still have to match first. So the same swipe left or right but once you match, there is a system that asks when you're free for a date. That's it.
Not exactly, you only have a very limited amount of profiles visible every day. About 4, though maybe it depends on the location. So there is no endless swiping. You also cannot match anyone else until you have set up a date with your last match, and if you opt out too many times (again, probably three or four) your account gets blocked.
In any case, you only pay for dates you go to (unless you cancel at the last moment). Their incentive is to send you to as many dates as possible.
Coffee Meets Bagels tried that. A few matches at 12PM every day.
I think the key problem for dating apps is that 90% of women on it will only match with the top 10% of men. Meanwhile, most men will try to match with anything that has a nose and eyes.
I don't think Breeze's concept fixes that since it's still up to the girl to match.
Unless I'm missing something, this sounds awful.
When was the last time you went on a date with someone new? I ask because it's likely less awful than the current state.
Why does it? I'm curious. I think it solves most of the issues of the traditional apps. (But yes, I didn't mention a fundamental aspect: they propose you only a very limited amount of profiles each day, no endless swiping: if you don't fancy any of your daily ~4, tough luck, you can come back tomorrow).
How do you verify that they are who the profile says they are without chatting beforehand?
You don't. You go to the date (in a public place, set by the app) and if there's something fishy about them you can report them to the app (there's an explicit feedback request after each date).
If you have to pay per match, then aren't you already out the money at that point? Not to mention the risk of just getting murdered.
Ooh, you lost $12! And your date did too, and probably the account as well. As for the risk of getting murdered, I think it's unavoidable in any app (and in life in general) but probably worse if you organise the date by yourself.
[dead]
This does absolutely nothing to address the underlying social, economic, and ideological reasons why new relationship formation is struggling so much, especially with Gen Z. It's not a technological problem, in other words.
I won't go into my personal explanations here as I'll just be downvoted into oblivion (there are other forums for that discussion) but I will say this: without men and women having reasons to be in relationships--especially long-term reasons--then relationships won't happen. It's proving easier to get our needs met outside of relationships.
> without men and women having reasons to be in relationships--especially long-term reasons--then relationships won't happen.
I'm actually fine with this. I'm not sure I want to be around the same person constantly for longer than a few years and I'm glad modern life allows me to do that. Leaving my family when I became an adult was the best thing I ever did.
I'm sure someone out there's thinking or about to say "families are the basis of a stable society" and that's incorrect. The basis of a stable society is having enough money. Without that, families are simply going to be a performative thing to satisfy angry people and/or busybodies.
>I won't go into my personal explanations here as I'll just be downvoted into oblivion
Enlighten us.
as surely as water will wet us
as surely as fire will burn
the gods of the copybook headings
with terror and slaughter return
I presume they’ll do something more akin to coffee meets bagel where you have X amount of people per day to choose to interact with. There’s not really much AI in all that. That’s been around for a decade+.
Hinge is the behemoth and it’s practically how everyone in the UMC and in rich cities meets now after college. It’s unsettling how few serious relationships I meet have been made in some other way (or even a different app) in recent years. Again, college is the big one but if you’re single after college then it seems you’re going to have to meet through Hinge. It’s hard to meet anyone who is serious in any other way.
Relationship pairing is overall down across the board though. Looksism is at its all time high and I think will continue to be even more dominant than it already has. I’ve seen the culture shift quite drastically over the last ten years. The idea of dating someone for their personality and completely ignoring their looks is well dead and gone at this point. No one even trying to keep up the facade that most everything in your dating prospects is dictated by your superficial traits.
When y'all get tired of this faffing about: pursue a suitable community of faith; date an actual person of the opposite gender until Destiny (and other wise eyes) indicate a match; marry, and let two be a large value of one; have or adopt some children; enjoy the fullness of life in all its seasons.
The old formula has endured and shan't be supplanted by these fancy gizmos.
The problem is that doesn't actually work. I've spent my entire life active in communities of faith and that certainly has never involved, helped with, or facilitated a date let alone a long term relationship.
I find that so incredibly hard to believe, in my experience it's like the primary purpose of people in relationships past a certain age is to play matchmaker.
It seems inevitable if you are consistently around people and known to be single that they will try to set you up with *someone.
I think that a lot of the problem is that most churches are full of people who are over 60 so there are often few eligable single people.
Church is one of the worst places to try to date and that’s not the purpose. The only purpose of church is worship, not socialization or politics or pushing an agenda or judgment
Maybe that's what you want the purpose to be, but for others, that's not necessarily the case.
> Church is one of the worst places to try to date and that’s not the purpose
This is surprising to me. I'd think churches would be overjoyed about congregants dating, getting married, and having children (who then go on to attend church).
> The only purpose of church is worship, not socialization or politics or pushing an agenda or judgment
Is this sarcasm?
Solid formula and it's great you're happy with it. But it doesn't apply to everyone.