In a clip recently posted online, Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of the dating site Bumble, claimed that she wants to “help create more healthy and equitable relationships” through AI.  

That sounds good until you hear the rest. Soon, she wants clients to be able to seek advice from your personal “AI dating concierge.” And one day, she said, your AI dating concierge could go on dates with other people’s AI dating concierges, reducing the number of actual people you would need to meet to find Mr. or Mrs. Right.  

So, instead of talking to real friends about your problems or going on dates with real people to build a real relationship, we’ll have online avatars do the hard work of dating for us. This kind of disembodied dating might take all the risk out of building relationships, but it would also take the reward (and strip it of reality). In an odd reversal of the goodness God created, this kind of AI dating leaves us ironically alone.