Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96454 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96454 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 482(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
My mind is racing with the possibilities. There are a couple of apps out there, but sometimes a popular app isn’t merely about functionality. We could make this a social experience. That’s another thing about my generation. We’re always looking for a social experience that doesn’t involve actual people. If we can post it online, we feel like we’ve done our duty and the memory is preserved for all of time.
Connect this app to reservation systems, review systems, and social media and we might have a gold mine.
“Sure.” Heath’s head is shaking. “But that’s not the point. The point is a high-level matchmaking experience for people who want to look beyond hookups.”
“His granny was considered one of Little Italy’s greatest matchmakers back in the day,” Darnell supplies helpfully. “That’s what all this is about.”
“Matchmakers? They still exist?” I ask. “I mean I know they do on Netflix and in other countries, but here? It seems so old-fashioned.”
“Yes, here.” Heath takes a swig of water and seems to decide how to handle me. “Okay, my great-grandmother came over from Sicily after the war. She’d been a matchmaker in the old country, and she took it up again here. She taught my grandmother. It’s not as popular as it was once, but she still counsels the people of the neighborhood and beyond. Some clients come from as far away as Florida for her services.”
“She puts people together?” I’m trying to wrap my head around that. See, this is one place where my generation does not want our choices narrowed down. We require many choices and want to be able to reject them all.
“Sometimes, or she gives you a list of what you should be looking for, what your red flags should be. Some red flags are universal. She makes her lists more personal. That’s one of the things I’m trying to teach the AI to do. So if a person loves dogs, maybe it’s better to not date a person with an allergy or one who’s afraid of dogs,” he offers. “Or if you love travel, you’re probably not a good match with someone who hates to leave home.”
There’s only one problem with this. Well, more than one, but this is the big hurdle. “There are actual services who do this. A ton of them. There’s Christian dating services. Apps for singles over fifty. Apps for people who don’t want to date the poors. I’m pretty sure even farmers have their own app. It’s a crowded field.”
“No one is approaching the situation the way I am,” he replies with surety. “I just have to refine my AI.”
“How are you going to teach it?” For an AI to learn, it has to process data. A lot of data. Say you want an AI to be able to write a book. You would feed it as many books as you can so it learns what it means to write a book—thereby also maybe violating a whole lot of authors who don’t want their work used that way. Trust me. They are very vocal about this, and no amount of promising them some cool future world will change their minds.
“I feed it information about couples with long-term relationships, and before you point out all the moral land mines, I have permission from each and every one,” he replies. “I’ve been conducting interviews over the last couple of years. I started with my grandmother’s clients. They make up the bulk of my research, but I’ve been trying to diversify so I’m going outside her work.”
“He means he’s interviewing gays and non-white people.” Darnell seems to be a giver.
I like him.
“My grandma mostly works with people of Italian descent,” Heath admits. “It’s who she knows, but when I started this project I wanted it to be something more, to help more people.”
It seems an odd quest for a man in his late twenties to be on, but I don’t know him well enough to question him. What I do know is that his AI is looking good. For the restaurant app. Not the Marry Me app. I’m also interested in his framework, which I’ve learned he’s been working on since he was in his teens.
But I’ve worked with guys like Heath for long enough that I know not to point that out now.
An idea is floating around in my head. I can take a couple of years and build my own or I can do what all smart businesspeople do and manipulate the cutie into a situation where he potentially makes a shit ton of cash and a real name for himself in the business.
Which means biding my time. And getting close to him. That sounds a little predatory, but when you really think about it, it’s for his own good.
I sit back. At this point he’s only asked me to look at a piece of code he’s having trouble with. I need to be more involved. “So all you need from me is to smooth out your interface?”