[AK View]Can Love Be Decided by an Algorithm

Date Drop fever at Stanford University
Nobel-winning matching theory designs romance
Optimized couples... vanished butterflies

These days, at Stanford University dormitories in the United States, hundreds of students simultaneously check their smartphones every Tuesday night at 9 p.m. That is when the dating application "Date Drop" introduces each user to a single potential soulmate. The app was created by four current students, including student body president Madhav Prakash and computer science master's student Henry Weng. Among them, Weng, who played a key role in the app's development, specializes in "matching theory." The "matching theory," which won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2012, uses algorithms that prioritize "preference" over "price" to help solve problems such as "kidney transplant matching" and "school assignments." Now, this advanced economic theory is making its mark on the search for romantic partners as well.

Within just half a year of its launch, 5,000 out of 7,500 Stanford undergraduates had signed up for Date Drop. The trend is now spreading to other elite U.S. universities such as Harvard, Columbia, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The app has already attracted 3 billion won in seed funding, and many experts predict it could become the next Facebook. The structure of the app is simple: users answer 66 questions about values, political views, life goals, communication style, and more. Based on these responses, the algorithm recommends exactly one user each Tuesday at 9 p.m. You cannot see the other person's face until you meet in person, and you can only chat with that one match for a week. Weng explained, "I wanted to eliminate the fatigue of profile show-offs and unlimited choices." Traditional dating apps like Tinder mostly rely on swiping left or right based on appearance. To see more matches, users often had to pay for unlimited selection rights.

The reasons for its popularity are easy to guess. For today's younger generation, dating has become a significant risk and a cost. A single failed confession could make academic life awkward, and you might have overlapping social circles with an ex. There are also concerns about crimes such as dating violence and romance scams. Above all, for university students busy with studies and building their resumes, "seeking natural encounters" has become a luxury. But if an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm selects a suitable match every Tuesday, dating becomes a "manageable task" in one's routine.

Still, it's hard to say whether the person chosen by the algorithm is truly the optimal match. There are many couples in the world who thrive together despite different personalities and tastes—something that would be impossible with such an algorithm. It's also unclear whether sincerely answering all 66 questions is a true expression of oneself or simply another way to present a curated version of who you are.

We have entered an era where even love is being "optimized." Revealing your feelings carelessly is now considered "inefficient behavior." But what we truly lack is not a better algorithm, but the courage to approach someone with all our imperfections. Romance inevitably comes with irrationality and discomfort. Can you really find "excitement" in a meeting where the probability of rejection is already calculated? The more I think about it, the more bittersweet it feels.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.