Why would an AI scientist go on “Love is Blind”?
“Love is Blind is more than a show, it’s an experiment. Its creators wanted to know, if we removed these confounding variables of age, race, etc., can people make a connection based purely on their conversations? I was drawn to the ‘experimental set-up’, if you will.”
On the future of dating apps
“What I've seen and what I can assume is that dating apps use some variation of collaborative filtering to underlie the algorithms.
But I think there's an inherent problem where after using the app for a period of time, it starts to narrow the scope of potential candidates so much that you're not exploring people outside of that recommended group who might be great potential matches.
That's something that I think could be improved upon in the future -- a more comprehensive app that’s able to look at a means for incorporating emotional factors, such as managing a household together, shared beliefs on family, and finances, and other domains.”
On his AI company, Alliance AI
“I wanted to start a company that was mobile and able to tackle nuanced problems that larger AI companies can’t always solve.
My biggest interest is in Parkinson's disease. I think there's a lot of room there for implementing AI to be able to do earlier diagnostics for the disease, and potentially improve some of the treatments for Parkinson's disease such as deep brain stimulation. There is space to optimize how DBS devices are used to treat Parkinson's.”
On the future of AI:
“The future of AI as I see it, is that it’s going to diverge from this science fiction vision where there's some maleficent AI that has a mind of its own and is taking over. The real positive trajectory is to think about how AI, in human life, can integrate in such a way that it’s only augmenting what we naturally do. Whether that means giving us a better quality of life on a daily basis by improving the way that we schedule our time, or cutting down the amount of time we spend doing minute tasks.
I see the future of AI as giving us more time to be creative by automating tasks, allowing us to dig deeper by helping us to do research, and letting us be more creative in general. And hopefully to be able to spend more time with other people and connect.”
If he’d recommend going on “Love is Blind”
“I would certainly recommend the "Love is Blind" approach. With that being said, I think it's all about you as an individual and how you go into it. With dating in any format, there's a certain level of openness and vulnerability that you'd need to be willing to expose yourself to. That's the main takeaway I had: if you want to make this work, you have to go into it prepared. You have to go into it being willing to take the chance that you may get hurt, and you have to be brave enough to expose yourself emotionally and be willing to give it a shot.”
*This interview has been edited and condensed