AI helpers in dating & job hunting?
Remarks made last May by Bumble founder and former CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd about AI (artificial intelligence) and the future of dating - including mention of a "dating concierge"[1] - had me returning to notions of a "self-driving" or AI resume for job searches that I explored a few years ago.
Comparisons of dating and the job market are not uncommon,[2] but I personally had no reason to go there before now. Could the evolution of AI lead to parallel developments of AI virtual helpers or independent agents for these two purposes? How might the two learn from each other? Could they eventually intersect, and how?
The AI "dating concierge"
It was in an interview with Bloomberg Live 's Emily Chang , that Ms. Wolfe Herd remarked (at about the 8 min. mark) that
"there's a world where your [AI] dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating conciege[s]. ... And then you don't have to talk to 600 people. It could scan all of San Francisco and say these are the three people you really ought to meet."[1,3]
Some reactions to this idea have pointed out similarities with a 2017 episode of the series Black Mirror .[4] Not having followed that series or seen that episode, I had to read up on it, but from that perspective it seemed to me that there is a fundamental and critical difference between that plot and what I understand Ms. Wolfe Herd to be talking about. And that merits a brief elaboration.
In the Black Mirror episode, there is a mysterious central entity called the "System" that makes and regulates matches. The AI dating concierge concept, on the other hand, sounds like independent (more or less) intelligent agents that dynamically search on behalf of individuals and interact with intelligent agents of other people to find, evaluate, and report on potential matches.
Centralized vs decentralized automation
The difference between the Black Mirror's "System" and Wolfe Herd's AI dating concierge seems to be broadly analogous to one I saw between two different visions of using information technology to make the job market more efficient (and, perhaps counterintuitively, also more human): a computer organized job market envisaged by James Cooke Brown in 2001; and the potential for individually tasked AI bots to connect individual job seekers with optimum hiring possibilities.[5, 6] The latter seemed more promising to me, and in light of advances in AI, it is arguably all the more so today.
It was during a period of job hunting that I began to look critically at the job search process itself: lost time; repetitive nature of job applications; incomplete awareness of job openings; opacity on the hiring side after applications; and the increasing asymmetry in technology at the disposal of job seekers on the one hand, and those doing the hiring on the other.
So, I wondered if 20th century resumes might ultimately be replaced by AI versions, that could share information relevant to specific contexts, dynamically interact with employers' automated systems, generate tailored resumes on demand (suitable for printing), and report back to their owners, i.e., the job seekers.
With this concept in mind, it was a short step to imagining these AI resumes or independent agents also being able to communicate with each other - to compare skills and employment history (without personal details), as well as their respective experiences with different hiring entities. Such a development could radically change the job seeking process, where up until now, people know little to nothing about other potential applicants to positions (only those doing the hiring can see everyone's qualifications today).[7]
How does this sketch of ideas about an AI independent agent for job seeking compare with the emerging concept of an AI dating concierge? From what we know, it seems there would be broad similarities:
Walled garden or in the wild?
One dimension of the AI dating concierge that was not clear to me from the limited information available is whether it would be intended to function only on a specific platform like Bumble, or "outside" with other such AI entities on the internet and across platforms. Yes, there would be a lot of questions concerning the latter, but in the narrow terms of potential value proposition for a company like Bumble, one imagines that the marketed service could be the AI dating concierge itself, and support, leaving behind the familiar platform.
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When thinking about AI independent agents for job searches, I initially imagined these being on a platform, such as an existing job site or something new, but in any event some kind of controlled environment. However, the clear downside of that is that it would limit potential to whoever signs up, and miss the opportunities in the outside world. At the same time, the demonstrated potential for job search bots to do work on the internet seemed to point in the direction of designing an AI independent agent do the same thing.
The dating environment, however, seems to have at least a couple of structural differences from the job market, which might make a controlled space desirable. First, people would not normally post their availability for dating in the same way that job openings and candidacy might be. Second, there are personal security issues in dating, which dating services at least ostensibly try to address,[8] and which are not as much of an issue where people are applying to companies for jobs.
So, a lot of thinking would have to go into each as separate challenges, even if there are strong similarities in basic concept.
Self-driving resume by day, AI dating concierge by night?
Longer term, one can't dismiss the possibility of a single personal AI helper playing different roles in different settings. Personally, if I were in the market for both functions, I would want them compartmentalized, but depending on how sophisticated they were in analyzing things like personal expression, might allow them to talk with each other...
Conversations with one's own AI helpers?
Whitney Wolfe Herd brought up the possibility of "conversing" with one's own AI dating concierge. That was in response to Emily Chang's mention of people seeking relationships with (and "falling in love with") bots (7:08, before the part about AI dating concierge dating AI dating concierge). Basically, Ms. Wolfe Herd is thinking about the AI concierge giving feedback on things like ways of thinking about oneself in the dating context, and presenting oneself.
Personally, in my early musings about an AI job search agent, I imagined that it would have to periodically check in with, or be called in by, its owner to review work and refine direction. That was before recent advances in chatbots. So perhaps, along the lines of what Ms. Wolfe Herd was talking about, the AI helper working on looking for jobs could offer useful accounts of the state of the game and where one is or potentially could be in it, plus useful tips, and all of that in real human language?
So maybe what we might be talking about is on the one hand, a personalized AI matchmaker, and on the other a personalized AI job coach? Except that in each case the AI helper is playing a more proactive role to help make things happen?
The future of AI helpers?
As of this writing, it does not appear that Bumble has rolled out any AI dating concierge app. Judging by titles of articles about it (almost all last May, from what I could see), reception of the idea was less than enthusiastic.
And on the side of AI and job searches, all we have seems to be third party platforms (plus AI chat bots) that may use algorithms to "fine-tune" resumes and/or make applications. Those may solve some issues, but still leave us basically with the 20th century job search/application model, where the enhancing technologies are not in the hands of job seekers themselves.
So, for the moment anyway, the notion of a personal AI helper in either domain still seems to be a matter of imagination and possibilities.
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Notes:
Your own article from 2017 was so advanced. "What if your resume 'kept on file' didn't just sit there?". Very impressive Don.