I saw this glorified ad read from Bumble…

The company has opted to phase out the swipe function in favor of AI-driven matchmaking that the company says will more effectively match potential members.

With the update, members will be able to share more detailed information about themselves beyond basic profile details.

The company said that additional information will allow the AI assistant to suggest matches more closely aligned with users’ hobbies and interests.

…and realized I have some related experience, actually.

Back when I was in high school and the IBM PS/2 was current tech, there was a student fundraiser. I don’t remember what they were raising money for, but I do remember the method: you’d pay a small fee and fill out a questionnaire, and an algo the students had written would suggest potential… I guess we’re calling them “matches” today.

Anyway, the money was collected, the results came out, and one of the strongest matches in the whole system was between a brother and sister. Oops.

Someone proposed a programmatic band-aid afterward, where the algo wouldn’t match people with the same last name. But the rest of the algo wasn’t much better, tending toward shallow results like “hey, you two both like sports, you should totally ask her out!”

(For extra comedy points, this school was small enough that there was a 50/50 chance you knew your suggested match already, even if you weren’t related…)

But I’m sure that this company is more sophisticated, with a more complex questionnaire and an algo written by adults that can account for the multitude of ways it’s possible for two people to connect romantically, and that it all won’t be declared a repellent clusterfail by however many of potential users don’t start twitching around the eyes at every mention of “AI” in corporate advertising these days…

…that was a lie, actually. I’m not sure of any of that at all, and I almost wish I knew a pair of siblings that both used Bumble.