AI Attachment Issues

No sooner do I finish writing up a post on my skepticism about AI and LLMs, when The Wall Street Journal posts a story titled:

Whitney Wolfe Herd Has a New Idea for Bumble—and All Our Relationships

…with the subtitle:

She’s spent nearly all of her working life atop the dating-app business, and believes artificial intelligence could be the matchmaker we all need

Jeeezus, Mary and Joseph…..

If you’ve never Heard of Ms Herd, join the club, but you can learn a lot about her from this article, which reads to me more like a publicity piece for her and her companies than a piece of reporting.

Whatever, she is currently the CEO of an online dating app company called Bumble, worked originally at Tinder, another online dating app, and the article says this:

Since returning to Bumble in March after stepping down as chief executive in late 2023, she’s led a secret project to build a new, AI-powered matchmaking app that’s based on a surprising hypothesis. What if AI could understand us better than we understand ourselves? And what if that understanding gave it the ability to choose better matches for us than we might for ourselves?

Ok, so you just know what I think about this. Why in the freakin’ hell would you want to turn over your choice of who to date to a piece of software?

I suppose the obvious answer is that if you are prepared to believe that the software understands you better than you do yourself, you certainly would.

My first thought is that I would not have wanted to go on a date with someone who believed that about a piece of software, just as I would not have wanted to go out with someone who thought having compatible astrological signs was important.

But it gets better. The article says this, too –

‘Wolfe Herd and a team at Bumble have consulted expert psychologists and relationship counselors to program a matchmaking AI.”

Well, since they have consulted expert psychologists, that will surely make all the difference.

Here’s what the article has to say about how this AI matchmaking will work.

Bumble’s new app aims to help users build a dating profile based on how they answer questions about past relationships, breakups and experiences with love and dating.

One potential question: “As much as you’re willing to share, what is it about your last breakup that hurt you, that you don’t want to repeat in a future relationship?”

It will be built as a large language model, a form of generative AI that communicates with users in a humanlike way. One area of psychology the company is leaning on heavily to inform the AI is the science of attachment theory, she says.

I love that – ‘the science of attachment theory’.

You know me, just can’t leave a fine piece of silliness like this alone, so I did some digging into attachment theory.

Oh, boy.

Here’s the Wikipedia two-sentence description of this ‘science’ –

Attachment theory is a psychological and evolutionary framework, concerning the relationships between humans, particularly the importance of early bonds between infants and their primary caregivers. Developed by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby (1907–90), the theory posits that infants need to form a close relationship with at least one primary caregiver to ensure their survival, and to develop healthy social and emotional functioning.

Ok, but how does that translate into dating? Just wait, there’s more –

Attachment theory was extended to adult romantic relationships in the late 1980s by Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver. Four styles of attachment have been identified in adults: secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant and fearful-avoidant. These roughly correspond to infant classifications: secure, insecure-ambivalent, insecure-avoidant and disorganized/disoriented.

Now, I suppose if we make the dubious assumption that by typing in answers to chatbot questions, the LLM can figure out what sort of ‘attachment style’ you favour, the question then becomes – how does it use this info about you and others to match people up? I guess users will find out eventually.

I confess to doing some online dating eons ago. In those days you just posted a profile and a photo or two, and you had to decide to contact any of the women on the site who had done the same, to see if they would have lunch with you. This resulted in two lunch dates in my case, neither a success. I figured out that, unlike me, who had just taken a photo with my digital camera and posted it, others posted pictures that were….let’s just say dated. And, of course, there is little reason to think what people wrote on their profiles was honest, either.

Looking back, my relationships were generally with women I met doing something in common. They were in the same profession, say, or in one case we met at a jazz and supper club because we both liked, you know, jazz and good food. Sometimes I was introduced to someone by a third person who knew us both. If you meet someone doing what you do, that’s maybe not a bad start, eh?

Then again, if the only thing you both do is poke at your smartphones, then that is all you have to work with, I guess.

The WSJ article does include two sentences that may reveal the key reason Ms Herd is going down this path:

Match Group, the dating behemoth that owns Tinder, Hinge and other dating apps, is on a yearslong streak of declining paying users. Bumble has a two-quarter losing streak of its own, and its market capitalization has fallen from a peak of more than $13 billion after its IPO to about $660 million today.

From $13B to $660M? Holy tomatoes, Batman, that’s a huge drop.

My money says this Attachment Theorized AI thing is not going to save Bumble or Ms Herd. But what do I know, I am a luddite.