There’s a plethora of technology out there designed to make our lives easier and better. Mapping platforms help us navigate and avoid traffic, and those with a far more narrow scope, like a music discovery app, can help us figure out the name of that catchy song playing in the grocery store. But what about helping us find something far bigger? What about love?
Just a few decades ago, romantic hopefuls' options for finding a partner were likely either by meeting them in person or being introduced by someone they both know. The only technology aiding them in their journey was perhaps a landline telephone. Since then, the dating experience has evolved significantly, and even popular television shows––like The Girlfriend Experience on Starz––explore a future where the world’s most advanced technology is targeted at quantifying our desire. Now, everything from algorithms, artificial intelligence, and behavioral experts are all conspiring to help people find a connection in a myriad of different ways.
Dating Algorithms
According to a Stanford University study, 39% of heterosexual people reported meeting their partner online. As stigma over meeting someone on the internet has faded, people have become more trusting of the internet to help them find a romantic partner. And in turn, these purveyors of digital romance are working to help them find one, too. Dating apps are constantly tweaking their algorithms in order to better the experience of hopeful lovers and create pairings that last. This means that before a user even sees a profile, the algorithm has already been at work behind the scenes.
While many platforms are secretive about the exact nature of their algorithms, we know that algorithms are in place to do things like weed out fake profiles, scan for inappropriate messages and offer up the most relevant or popular content. One app uses the Nobel Prize-winning Gale-Shapley algorithm to find optimal matches based not only on who you’re likely to like, but who’s likely to like you back. It’s the same general principle used to match doctors with their residency program: the doctor and the hospital both rank their top choices and a match is determined based on each group’s list with the goal of trying to get everyone their highest-ranked choice. The algorithm works to determine who a person will be most compatible with.
Machine Learning Algorithms
There are also algorithms that are designed to get smarter and learn someone’s preferences, such as machine learning algorithms. These are employed to help determine what people want, and then deliver it to them. Many apps use what’s called collaborative filtering, where users will be shown the most popular content on the app first, which is based solely on what, or who, other users have liked the most. A machine learning algorithm on a dating app, for example, will show profiles based on the kinds of characteristics a user has liked and who they’ve interacted with in the past. If someone likes something, the algorithm will offer up more of that same thing, so if a user is consistently showing interest in 35-year-olds with tattoos then they’ll likely get more profiles that fit that demographic.
Behavioral Studies
Beyond these technological processes, social scientists have long used their own methods and lab work to help determine compatibility. The prolific psychological researcher Dr. John Gottman has done some of the most well-known research about marriage and couples and their long-term compatibility. As a result of his research, Dr. Gottman has figured out how to predict––with 90% accuracy––which couples will divorce and which will stay married based on their behavior and how they interact with one another. Dr. Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington, has written a number of books about love and sex, like Finding Your Perfect Match. After decades of research, she created an approach to lasting compatibility based on eight personality characteristics and five lifestyle issues (e.g. money, sex, and children). Her approach is largely based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a popular personality test, that gets at how people’s perceptions of the world and how they make choices.
How can technology and scientists figure out what we want, and what does this all mean for the future of dating? It’s a big question and one that’s being explored in the upcoming third season of the Starz series, The Girlfriend Experience (airing on May 2nd). The show acknowledges our increasingly digitized lives. Season three is set in London’s tech scene and follows Iris, the neuroscientist protagonist, who studies human behavior for a company marketed as a “human desire company.” Iris and her colleague work on an AI project that mirrors human emotion and analyzes desire in order to gather data that future for-profit applications can be built upon. How could that app be created and what would it look like? Can we quantify our desire? Desire is, in essence, a data point. Sound familiar?
The show centers on the relationships between escorts who provide “The Girlfriend Experience” to their wealthy clients. In this season, Iris begins to explore the world of these transactional relationships and finds that the sessions she has with her clients give her a competitive advantage in the tech world, but she also discovers that her work in tech gives her an edge over her clients. We follow Iris as she navigates these two worlds and starts to question what is driving her own actions.
The online dating industry was valued at $2.23 billion in 2019 and is expected to grow exponentially. In this realm of profiting on human desire, whether in a fictional television series or with the dating apps on our phones, one has to wonder if it’s technology driving love or love driving technology? Is it free will or the will of an algorithm?
Dating algorithms and social scientists provide us with access to new people and insights on compatibility, so perhaps it doesn’t matter how we find love, as long as it helps us find it. Of course, no algorithm or machine can predict real-life chemistry––at least not yet––so while an algorithm can be as creative and technologically advanced as possible, serving you up a highly compatible romantic match, it’s still up to you to do the rest.
Season Three of The Girlfriend Experience premieres on Sunday, May 2, 2021, at 8 p.m. EST on Starz. Watch the trailer here.
*This story was produced by WIRED Brand Lab for Starz.*
