Hinge CEO Justin McLeod says dating AI chatbots is ‘playing with fire’

He said: “We want to continue at Hinge to champion human relationships, real human-to-human-in-real-life relationships, because I think they are an essential part of the human experience, and they’re essential to our mental health. It’s not just because I run a dating app and, obviously, it’s important that people continue to meet. It really is a deep, personal mission of mine, and I think it’s absolutely critical that someone is out there championing this. Because it’s always easier to race to the bottom of the brain stem and offer people junk products that maybe sell in the moment but leave them worse off. That’s the entire model that we’ve seen from what happened with social media. I think AI chatbots could frankly be much more dangerous in that respect.

So what we can do is to become more and more effective and support people more and more, and make it as easy as possible to do the harder and riskier thing, which is to go out and form real relationships with real people. They can let you down and might not always be there for you, but it is ultimately a much more nourishing and enriching experience for people. We can also champion and raise awareness as much as we can. That’s another reason why I’m here today talking with you, because I think it’s important to put out the counter perspective, that we don’t just reflexively believe that AI chatbots can be your friend, without thinking too deeply about what that really implies and what that really means.

We keep going back to junk food, but people had to start waking up to the fact that this was harmful. We had to do a lot of campaigns to educate people that drinking Coca-Cola and eating fast food was detrimental to their health over the long term. And then as people became more aware of that, a whole personal wellness industry started to grow, and now that’s a huge industry, and people spend a lot of time focusing on their diet and nutrition and mental health, and all these other things. I think similarly, social wellness needs to become a category like that.”

Might be, but still better than using those incredibly unfriendly depression inducing dating apps.

Never understood the appeal of using these AI chatbots as a partner or even as a buddy. Just find actual humans to talk to? There’s 7 billion people.

Don’t be surprised when gpt sells all your chat logs to all the corporations if they’re not already doing that.

The next big thing that will be added to dating apps and sites will be ai. Currently we have a ton of fake profiles that you get likes and messages from, you pay up to read and suddenly those disappear. Next ones will be ai, they’ll actually engage in conversation and make you feel wanted but when meeting comes up, they’ll make an excuse or ghost you and the whole process will begin again

I mean not that I don’t think there are dangers but I’m sure there are a cohort out there that would be better served talking to an ai chat bot that a least “listens” then getting rejected like over and over and despairing lol. Like dating apps tend to work for a small majority and for everyone else it’s a struggle. Guys talking like everyone on hinge is super well adjusted.

AI is a system of numerical vectors, not a thinking consciousness. It mirrors your thoughts. You can’t have a relationship with it.