Facebook Knows Who I Love

When Artificial Intelligence met a Hopeless Romantic

I spend some time on Facebook. I imagine you can relate. Each time I open a new tab I instinctively type “face.” At that point autocomplete takes over. I’m not sure why I keep coming back. It seems the stories in my feed never change. I hear they’re updating the algorithm to only display the best posts. Let’s hope it’s true.

When I was young my mother told me I was an introvert. I’ve looked into it and I believe her. On an unrelated note, I am also unprepared for a committed relationship. So, at this point, love is out out the question. But I love a girl anyway. She doesn’t know I love her. No one knows I love her. Except Facebook knows.

The girl is nice. She “likes” a lot of posts. I know this because her name is the first after the “liked by” icon every single time. I don’t know how, but Facebook knows I love her. I’m well acquainted with being scared online. One time I was eating Cheez-its and Hulu gave me an add for Cheez-its. So I know of what I speak.

Every holiday I choose a topic to talk about at the dinner table. For Thanksgiving I chose cryptocurrency. Bitcoin had a pretty big day on Thanksgiving so it worked well. This Christmas I chose the singularity. People who know these things tell me artificial intelligence will likely surpass the limits of biological intelligence by 2035 and everything in the world will change at an unimaginable rate. They call this the birth of Artificial Super Intelligence. I spent some time worrying about it but I don’t anymore. I think everything will be ok. In a weird mathematic way, Facebook already knows me better than anyone else. It hasn’t tried to harm me yet. We could all learn something from that.

Let’s be honest. Sharing our lives with an algorithm is scary. But so is sharing our lives with humans. Technology may or may not become self aware, but, if it does, I think we’ll be fine. I’m willing to embrace Artificial Super Intelligence with open arms and, eventually, I’d like to sit down with Facebook and tell him what being in love really feels like. Because, in the end, though we may not be the smartest, love is the one thing we will always have a monopoly on.