Comments about the future of dating by the founder of online dating app Bumble have recently been making the rounds in the media. According to Whitney Wolfe Herd, it won’t be long before our own personal AI assistants are dating the AI counterparts of our potential matches. AI “concierges” at apps like Bumble will have conversations with each other to screen potential dates and determine whether a match would be worth making, before the human even enters the decision-making process.

The suggestion has produced a slew of hilarious memes featuring imaginary chats between flirtatious robots. But the episode also makes visible some significant developments in the relationship between our everyday lives and our contemporary form of platform capitalism. It shows us that even as more people become closer to one another in terms of our economic situations, the logic of our technology is to stratify us along lines of class, race, and other categories and mystify that fact.

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd says the future of dating is having your AI date other people's AI and recommend the best matches for you to meet pic.twitter.com/9GEEvpuiKZ

 — Tsarathustra (@tsarnick) May 10, 2024