Patrick Bateman on Tinder

An Instagram wag called Ethan Keiser recently programmed an AI to blitz online dating apps and approach 49,000 women on his behalf.

He got 5,000 positive responses and programmed the software to interact with those women in the style of fictional characters Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and James Bond, both of whom have what you might understatedly call obnoxious attitudes to women.

He took film quotes and got the AI to use them in automatic replies when people messaged his account, for example, boasting in the style of Patrick Bateman that he could get them in ‘anywhere’ for a dinner reservation. In the end he apparently received 500 women’s numbers.

I’m not sure what the lesson is here. I find this brand of woman-chasing clever-dickery a bit odious to be completely honest. But I concede it is a clever demonstration of how you can programme an AI to do lots of dirty work for you.

What’s the key point to take from it, assuming it’s all true? That AI can be abused to get people what they want? That nerds (I’m picturing you, Mark Zuckerberg) can use technology to make themselves feel socially empowered? Or that some people respond positively to (online) displays of status and arrogance from potential mates? I’m not quite sure.

I don’t think I’ll be programming an AI to do anything like this any time soon (I am no coder, for one thing…), but if I could, what would I get it to do? Probably something agreeably innocent like tidy up my out-of-control email inbox and unsubscribe me from tedious mailing lists. Or to analyse my exercise regime and tell me what I should be doing more of and when. There are plenty of apps for these kinds of task already of course. And there’s no need to reinvent the wheel with an AI.

Perhaps the main problem is that I just don’t have the urge to do naughty things with AI. Except go back in the past and mess with the space time continuum via PastMaster, of course.

What tasks would you use AI for if you could?