Swiping Soulmates: Finding Efficiency in Inefficiency
Your finger hovers above the screen as the familiar bright-red fire symbol ignites below it. The app opens and you are energized by the sight of fresh new profiles: Kim, 21. Not your type. Taylor, 18. Too young. Devon, 22. And it’s a match! Dating apps have gained steady popularity with an audience of over 300 million just this year, serving as a one-stop-shop solution to the inefficiency and lackluster process of traditional dating methods. Finding a partner in an actual setting may mean scouring the streets, restaurants, cafes, bars, hoping to bump into someone you find attractive, not taken, and moreover, have the intention of dating. The boxes to tick are numerous. I have seen hopeful friends dress up for a solitary stroll in the park with the intention of concocting their own Notting Hill meet-cute, but to no avail. Instead, a simple 5 minute stroll in the virtual park of Hinge can set you up on a date, and for life!
Catchphrases such as “It starts with a swipe” (Tinder) simplify the notion of connection into a mechanical action, whilst other pitches “Date, chat, meet new people” (Bumble) reduce the notion of connection into a three step process. We are so enticed by efficiency and simplicity that we are not only willing to forgo any emotions of awkwardness, messiness, or vulnerability that characterize first-time meet ups, but the freedom to find love in a pool of non-algorithm-filtered bachelors; such processes enacted by dating apps plot efficiency and freedom of choice as antagonistic forces, where efficiency is often achieved at the expense of true autonomy. This tension is illuminated in Ford’s “Save the Robots” and Douglas Hofstadter’s “Essay in the Style of Douglas Hofstadter”. Both essays will serve as a framework for understanding and dissecting why we so thoughtlessly forgo our freedom for efficiency, and the potential implications of embracing inefficiency.
In Ford’s “Save the Robots: Cyber Profiling and Your So-Called Life”, he explains the simplicity of replacing traditional dating with an AI driven system: “If I breakup with my girlfriend, I get a bottle of Scotch and a list of potential dates[selected for their desirability based on my subjective preferences] from a suitably exclusive online dating service.” (Ford, 1578) The promise of efficiency, certainty, and success is so ingrained into our perception of online systems that surrendering even the most intimate parts of our lives to apps such as Tinder, Grinder, and Hinge have become an axiomatic and intuitive process. The dating app, is afterall “suitably exclusive” and “subjective”, what is not to love? A preliminary reading of Ford’s paper seems to discuss AI through a romanticized lens, such that a binary dichotomy is created between real life and AI, where the mess of life is contrasted with the simple solutions AI can provide. Instead of a fear of robots and machines, an axiomatic fear of real life is manufactured. Real life is, afterall, framed in all its drudgery as Ford delineates the troubles we can avoid by simply employing AI: “I don’t have time to read the New York Times book review most Sundays, because my cyberdopplganger knows about every book ever written. I’m moody temperamental and sometimes make irrational or impulsive choices, but cyberdopplenager.com’s computer is always cool and objective.” (1577) By portraying the human condition as messy, temperamental, and turbulent, and, by contrast, the cyber-doppelganger as omniscient, Ford seems to be positioning readers to appreciate and even immediately subscribe to AI. He even introduces the advent of a “cyber doppelganger” which then becomes a “cyber butler”. By shifting the title “doppelganger” to the identity of “butler”, a position connotated with means to help and assist, Ford reinforces the notion that AI is set up merely to assist and benefit humans.
What can’t be ignored, however, is the cacophony of fonts used throughout the different sections of Ford’s essay. His employment of font seems to contribute to his claim that frames the “cyber butler” as omniscient, having the ability to generate the best advice and the best suggestions to enhance one's life. An initial reading may suggest that the Fonts enhance the robotic voice in Ford’s paper, such as in the example above where the persona breaks up with their girlfriend and are fed numerous solutions, paving way to an understanding that Ford’s use of a cyber-futuristic font is to create a more visceral representation of the robot. Yet, as readers continue to read, further applications of the font begin to emerge, complicating the purpose of the fonts effect. For example, when Ford delineates how subscribing to such systems bear no financial burden to the user: “What about freedom of choice? Won’t I be ceded individual choice to a machine? Relax, remember it’s all voluntary, I don’t have to accept any of the suggestions offered by my cyber-doppelganger. If the suggestions aren't good for me, I can reject them.” (1576) Here, Ford’s narrative persona is no longer a robot. Instead, it assumes the pronoun “I” which refers to a human persona that subscribes to the cyber-doppelganger. Evidently, the font's stylistic effect differs greatly from the first example. The subsequent uses of font also don’t seem to adhere to any pattern. If Ford’s argument is the straightforward notion that the “cyber butler” is all knowing, and can generate the best advice, then why does he employ such a complicated and distracting visual rhetorical device to convey it?
To understand this, we turn to Hofstadter’s “Essay in the Style of Douglas Hofstadter”. Similar to Ford’s essay, Hofstadter crafts the perception that AI is deeply intelligent and cognitively sophisticated. The initial framing of the essay lends readers to think that it is written by an advanced tool known as “experiments in writing intelligence,” shortened to the quip acronym EWI. The rest of the article seems relatively straightforward, and the readers are at once impressed by the remarkable semblance EWI has to human sensibility. On the surface, the EWI checks all boxes which is stated overtly in the concluding commentary by Hofstadter, gleaned as a shortened version of the name Douglas Hofstatder. Hofstadter writes, “Dave Coco-Pope’s computer program EWI is amazing, and I (begrudging- ly) admit that it does capture a lot of my style. For example, EWI hit the nail on the head in stressing my staunch belief that doing physics is a profound activity of the human mind—that’s my style all over!—and moreover it cleverly imitated my style of using parody to get my ideas across.” (Hofstatder, 87) In the paragraph, Hofstadter names “physics is a profound activity of the human mind” as one of his stylistic attributes. Yet, upon a re-read, this sentence is not only incongruent with the definition of “style”, as believing in physics is not a stylistic quality, it doesn’t actually reveal anything specific about Hofstadter’s personal beliefs given “physics” being a “profound activity” is a common and shared conviction. This minute detail that reveals EWI’s limited understanding of Hofstadter’s style is buried deep beneath elongated praise: em dashes, exclamation marks, and affirmative terms “amazing”, “hit the nail on the head.” By intentionally crafting rhetorical inconsistencies and concealing them in a contradictory context, Hofstadter urges readers to lift the veneer of praise through the inefficient task of re-reading.
Hofstadter posits re-reading as a transformative tool that can significantly alter the line of argument of a paper. This is perhaps most prominent in the last commentary that references the unassuming presence of the ampersand and asterisk. Hofstadter points out that he would “never have used ampersands…I myself would have used asterisks.”(87) However, when readers reach the end of the “final (and finally straightforward)” remark that is written by Hofstadter as his true self, they realize that the end of the essay is punctuated by an ampersands triangle which “runs completely against the grain of his[my] personal article-writing style.” This not only draws attention to the previously unnoticed graphics, but also creates a new layer of tension where readers are prompted to reconsider what is real and what is not. If Hofstadter would never use ampersands, then why does he use it to mark the end of a section that is clearly written by him? Through the simple graphics of an ampersand and asterisk, Hofstadter sends readers on a whirlwind of re-reads. It is only through this inefficient process that they achieve a final epiphany of clarity: Hofstadter’s aim was to have readers undergo the tedious process of thinking about their thinking, known as metathink, which is what ultimately differentiates human and machine computation, and elevates human sensibility. This forges an underlying argument beneath the praise given to the EWI and shows how the inefficiency and disorientation of metathink is often required to achieve refined clarity and insightful conclusions. A reader wouldn’t be able to grasp the true extent of Hofstadter’s essay if they weren’t willing to engage in the messy process of re-reading and re-thinking. To that end, to answer the question about Ford’s change of font, the exercise of re-reading must be enacted.
A re-reading of Ford’s essay shows how his employment of fonts actually follows no pattern —what if Ford’s font choice is arbitrary, which is exactly what makes it intentional? Perhaps Ford, like Hofstadter, also buries his warning about AI through positive affirmation. Instead of cautioning readers through clearly worded sentences, such as “AI is bad”, Ford’s warning to readers is to show them just how easy it is to take a plunge into a world fully dictated by AI. The font change pushes readers to realize the drudgery and hard-work of hermeneutics and thinking. This epiphany is augmented by the time markers that punctuate Ford’s paper: “twenty minutes into the future,”(1575) “forty-five minutes into the future”, (1577) “an hour into the future”(1578). If readers were to think deeply about this, it would be disorienting as “an hour into the future” would most likely not lend itself to a world fully dominated by AI. No matter the amount of critical thinking, readers will not be met by a concrete answer. The furnishings of font and time employed by Ford can therefore be considered a rhetorical strategy of distraction, so that readers are so overloaded by extrinsic details that they just accept what the text posits AI can offer. Thus, by couching readers in a moment of over-think, a heightened state of confusion, where no right answer can deliberately be located, Ford exposes just how easy it is to be lulled into total complacency and acceptance of AI. The incessant praise afforded to AI thus takes on a deeply ironic meaning and readers are shown just how easy we sacrifice free choice, in this case our ability to think clearly and make informed judgments about the implications of AI beyond what the essay delineates, for efficiency.
By using Ford and Hofstadter’s essays as a framework to understand and dissect the tension between efficiency and free-will, it is clear that online systems are able to mitigate inefficiency and simplify complex decisions that can seemingly make real life more productive. However, the ironic bargain at play is that this comes at the steep cost of true productivity, as engaging with inefficiency means refusing to confine ourselves to limitations on choice and will. Readers who are unwilling to engage in the inefficiency of both texts by way of re-reading ultimately leave with a reduced and limited understanding of both arguments, which renders their readings inefficient. For your next date, perhaps forgo the virtual world of Hinge and open yourself up to the possibilities of the real world, exchanging swipes and automated messages for awkward conversations, difficult discourse, and inefficient exchanges.
