Tag: AI



Valentine’s Day is tomorrow. Love is in the air … and on the internet, where many singles will turn to score a date. About 30% of U.S. adults—including 53% of people under 30—have used a dating site or app, according to 2022 Pew Research Center data. According to the same survey, 40% of users say online dating has made the search for a long-time partner easier.

Vittert

Dating apps make no secret of their use of artificial intelligence (AI) to help users find their perfect match, although just how the algorithms work is less clear. Many of the most popular dating apps — including Tinder, Bumble, eHarmony and OKCupid — use the data you provide and your interactions within the apps to curate lists of potential matches, making the sea of fish a little bit smaller and more manageable, said Liberty Vittert, a professor of practice of data science at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

But recent reports of online dating app users employing AI to strike up conversations and flirt with matches—or worse, scam them—have some saying AI has gone too far.  

Romance ‘beyond reach’ for robots

Plenty of would-be suitors—fictional and real—have sought help to woo their love interests. Who can forget “Cyrano de Bergerac,” the 19th-century play that tells the story of a man who helps his inarticulate rival win Roxanne’s heart by feeding him love poems and letters? But human romance is beyond reach, currently, for robots, Vittert said.

“Robots don’t have human emotions. We are actually a long way away from what we see in movies,” Vittert said. “They don’t work very well outside what they are programmed to do. For example, they can beat a grand master at chess, but if you then ask it to choose to play checkers instead, it can’t necessarily make that decision.”

And because the technology is so new, no one is regulating or stopping it.

“The scariest part is that we have no idea what the implications are going to be, but we do know that when the use of AI has been rushed, that there are dire consequences,” Vittert said.

For example, police relying on AI facial recognition to decide who to arrest, when the algorithm does a terrible job identifying people of color “has resulted in completely innocent individuals being jailed for up to a week,” Vittert said, “or Amazon hiring based on resumes that had the keywords ‘fraternity, male, lacrosse,’ we have already seen serious, unforeseen consequences.” 

How to spot a bot

As with any dating situation—online or in person—it’s important to use caution. Avoid sharing personal information and do not respond to requests for financial help. Most importantly, listen to your gut. If something doesn’t feel right, there’s a good chance it’s not.

“Warning signs that you might be chatting with a bot versus a real person are going to be hard to tell as the AI gets better and better, but if you think it seems a little off, a little weird, not quite getting the tone—that is where you can tell,” Vittert said.

“AI can’t yet understand humor or tone, so if the responses to your humor or tone don’t seem to jive, then it’s possible you are talking to a bot.”


Automation, or the use of robots and other artificial intelligence to perform tasks, has increased dramatically over the past couple decades. And while a Skynet scenario in the near future is unlikely, we are undoubtedly on the brink of an automation revolution.

John Stroup, President & CEO of Belden Inc., recently paid a visit to The Boeing Center to discuss some of the economic drivers for a revolution in automation. He believes that the United States is well-positioned for increased automation in manufacturing due to recent technological advances. In fact, the majority of manufacturing jobs lost in the last 10-15 years are a result of increased automation, not offshoring (as is commonly thought).

One of the economic factors Stroup credits for the automation revolution is the rise in minimum wages. As labor costs increase, companies look for ways to decrease spending, often turning to machines to replace their human counterparts. But despite the downward trend in manufacturing jobs, there has been a massive uptick in productivity due to robotics and other technology. He predicts that by 2025, the global average of tasks performed by robots will be around 25%, more than double what it is today. Stroup then went on to describe his experience at a “lights-out factory,” or a factory that doesn’t turn on the lights because it utilizes only robots and artificial intelligence.

Stroup went on to mention that Europe is often ahead of the curve in terms of automation due to relatively expensive labor. Regardless of one’s opinions about automation, we are likely to see its increased adoption as global labor costs rise and the cost of implementing AI falls.

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Entrepreneurship

Marc Bernstein’s journey from entrepreneurship major at Olin to co-founder of a software startup was short thanks to the close connections between WashU and the St. Louis startup community.

“I’ve known Marc since he was a sophomore in college, he was engaged and passionate about entrepreneurship,” Cliff Holekamp, Olin’s senior lecturer in entrepreneurship told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in an article profiling Bernstein, BSBA’15, and his co-founder of Balto software. 

Holekamp recalled his former student’s enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, “Over his time in college he [Bernstein] got engaged with the startup scene in St. Louis and started getting excited about software.”

Holekamp, who is also a partner in St. Louis-based VC firm Cultivation Capital, helped Bernstein get a job at TopOPPS, a local software firm that specializes in predictive analytics for sales. There, Bernstein met Chris Kontes who was working at the company as a Venture for America fellow. Together, the two college grads hatched a plan for a new kind of software that uses artificial intelligence to to improve the success rate of sales reps working in call centers.

Link to article.