Dating Apps Under Siege by AI Fakes, And MIT’s Surprise On the Jobs AI Will Hit First

For the single people out there, it’s cuffing season, so naturally, many people are going to their favorite dating apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and many others. But there’s a hidden and growing challenge on these apps that hardly anyone is talking about: AI-generated fake profiles.

In a new video, I unpacked this phenomenon by highlighting conversations I had with security expert and author Perry Carpenter, and recently viral matchmaker and dating coach Kailen Rosenberg. I also included exclusive never-before-seen footage of actress Lily James (Downton Abbey, Cinderella) talking about her experience starring in and producing the film Swiped, the Hulu biopic story of Whitney Wolfe Herd, the co-founder of Tinder and Bumble. During her talk, she touched on the perils inherent in dating app culture, specifically for women.

The 15-minute video is a good primer for what some of you may face out there in the wild world of online dating. There’s a good chance you’ve already interacted with an AI-generated profile and didn’t even know it, so this is a must-watch if this topic is still in your blind spot and will help you adjust your online dating strategy accordingly.

You can watch the full video via YouTube now. And while you’re at it, please be kind enough to Like the video and subscribe to the channel! 🎁🎄

AI Winter For Jobs Is Here?

The other topic I wanted to highlight is the ongoing story of AI and the job market. I’ve been tracking the mass layoffs that seemed to really kick in back in 2022 and haven’t slowed down yet.

Unlike the past, where a company announcing mass layoffs was something of a notable event, so many mass layoffs have occurred in the past 35 months that 14,000 jobs erased here or there no longer seem to even draw widespread headlines or social media chatter.

I’ve also noticed a new habit among some of the larger companies of burying “super” mass layoffs by spacing out the mass layoffs over several quarters, so the media story doesn’t hit badly as it might if one had to read a 50,000-worker layoff headline (I’m looking at you, Meta). Things really start to look grim when even Apple and Microsoft, the number two and three most valuable tech companies on Earth (after Nvidia, at number one), are also conducting mass layoffs.

And while the common refrain is that, across industries, many of these layoffs are hitting entry-level jobs the hardest, that’s not what my anecdotal lens is telling me. From my vantage point, I’m frequently (particularly on Threads, for some reason) encountering a large number of people reporting being laid off after 10, 15, and 20 years at one job. Aside from my surprise that people even stay at companies that long anymore, it’s also been somewhat heartbreaking to hear some of the stories.

The worst stories are from those who were heads down at their company, focused on the work, and had a distinct, purpose-driven skillset. Often, these people didn’t update their array of competencies and are now facing a job landscape that is totally foreign to the world of even five years ago.

Now, a new report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is doing away with a lot of the CEO “there’s nothing to see here” dismissive talk and aiming an analytical lens at AI’s likely real impact on human jobs. The study [PDF] is called “The Iceberg Index: Measuring Skills-centered Exposure in the AI Economy,” and offers some insight into what may be coming next for U.S. workers. The methodology involved working with U.S. state governments and using their data to produce simulations indicating how various job sectors would shake out in the face of AI automation.

The study delves into what jobs may or may not be exposed to AI disruption. Perhaps the most surprising finding in the study is that the impact of AI on jobs, according to the researchers, will also be felt in Middle America rather than just on the coastal hubs of white-collar work.

Another counterintuitive projection is that AI’s impact on tech workers will be markedly less than on some white-collar jobs, such as administrative tasks, document processing, financial analysis/financial tasks, HR, logistics, and healthcare administration. This is unlike anything we’ve seen before. Prior tech disruptions were answered by claims (mostly true) that new jobs would be created around the new technology.

But AI isn’t static, and the companies developing it are laser-focused on improvements that occur seemingly monthly. AI is currently a tool in many respects, but it seems like it’s hurtling toward transcending that passive role in many industries. I’m working on a few ideas that might give us all some hope in the face of this challenge, but right now, I’m still examining the patient. Stay tuned.