Several years ago I wrote about online dating and how it’s terribly miserable, and a couple months back I wrote about big data. This week I’m going to combine those two ideas with yet another, artificial intelligence, to talk about the future of dating and apparently all human decisions. Yes, the combination is a technological milkshake of sorts, but the theory could impact our future.
I’m single and have been on plenty of online dating sites with no avail. I’ve hated every experience and vowed to never do it again. The last time I paid for a site was to badger an old friend about how she treated my kids. In hindsight I probably should have used the month to chat up my cute neighbor.
If you’ve ever used an online dating service you can vouch for how daunting the experience can be. You talk to plenty of people and most of the time they’re just as crazy as those you meet in normal places. After the initial messaging you decide if it’s going further. Most of the time the people online prove to be fake so you kick yourself for wasting $40.00 a month.
A new technology that’s currently in the works takes online dating to the next level and combines big data collected about me and you with artificial intelligence to create virtual dates. In the virtual dating world I could date digital likenesses of thousands of women before being connected with them. Each likeness is based on big data collected from many different sources.
As the virtual dates progress artificial intelligence is used to evaluate and modify with the purpose of finding the ideal match. The scientists working on this expect to eliminate some of the blunders that arise from meeting people in nontraditional ways. Virtual meetings make some sense because they may increase the odds of finding a match.
The premise is to eliminate human interactions by virtually honing in on the right choice. Yes, machines that actually handle and accurately make human decisions. Ultimately this could mean a machine could be my new best friend by interacting with me and learning my personality, likes and dislikes.
According to one article I was reading, scientists are working on human drones that not only think but look and move like an actual human. The development team is writing software that will adapt to the owner to eventually become its human companion’s best friend. Again, this is actually happening.
Combining artificial intelligence and big data is something called adaptive technology. I did some research about adaptive technology but it appears to be a recently coined term by a bunch of antisocial scientists. Rather than making predictions and learning about us, adaptive technology will become accustomed to who we are.
Scientists behind this new technology expect it to make decisions for us. These machines will learn our characteristics, communicate with other machines and voila, a decision is made on behalf of the human owner. In a radio interview one of the creators said the machines could help us with relationships, finding jobs and many other activities we normally have to think about.
The whole notion of adaptive technology is very scary to me because it could possibly remove the need for thought. With this type of technology we as humans wouldn’t have to process information. In the future I would no longer have to search out a potential love interest and would be very happy dating Rosie from the cartoon The Jetsons.
(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can call him at (978) 919-8059 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)