Dr. Raffaele Ciriello

Have an AI marriage, have AI kids, go to AI couples therapy.

It becomes a bit bizarre, but that is actually for a lot of people already the reality.

And so I think it's really an opportune time for us to ask, what do we really want from a relationship?

And how do we get there?

Of course, it already, pre-AI, has taken away a lot of the messiness, a lot of the intuition that is part of meeting someone, experiencing their voice, their smell, how they behave themselves, how their teeth are looking, and so on.

All of this is not part of the dating experience.

And I think that's what people are getting fatigued about.

But it's clear that because, according to some statistics, it's still more than half

the majority of people the majority of couples have found their partner online now even that was unthinkable half you know half a decade ago so it's kind of like paradoxical in the sense that a lot of people are turning to these apps at the same time they're getting fatigued from it i think part of the problem is just that relationships are complicated right it's not something that you can easily automate right and that has been true since the dawn of time right

relationships are messy humans can be difficult and sometimes it's the most frustrating thing you can experience it's also the most exhilarating thing you can experience right so you know digital Technologies can kind of help in you know figuring out

what you might like and who might be a match and connecting people, but it doesn't automate the process.

From that perspective, I think the idea of having AI assisted matchmaking or even an AI dating assistant is fundamentally flawed.

At the very least, it's risky, right?

So I think there's a lot of potential for dark sides and negative consequences that could arise without necessarily foreseeing them.

That's speculative.

I would say because of what we've seen in our research on AI companions, it's probably going to be different than that, right?

So it's not like, I mean, the swiping and the, you know, the dopamine kick you get from a match.

And, you know, there's a lot of people on dating apps that are just there for the matches and not actually talking to anyone, right?

Just there to kind of like get that dopamine kick.

That's very similar to swiping through reels on social media.