Stupid CUPId

“Oh, loosen up, Lori. It’s just a dance. Are you such a purist that you can’t handle even that?” “I’m not a purist,” Lori protested, more sharply than she intended. “I just don’t want to do this, so will you please go dance and leave me alone?” Monica scoffed. “Fine, you be a party pooper. The rest of us are going to go have fun.” She pushed her chair in with a screech. "But don't think anyone's going to give you special treatment for it this time." With that, she was gone. Lori, left alone, sighed and fiddled with her napkin. She didn’t want to dance with an AI selected partner and that was that. It had nothing to do with Monica, so why wouldn't she leave her alone? And bringing up a fight from high school - really? The "special treatment" jab was clearly referencing their junior year history class, when Lori had been one of three students not to be put under special supervision by the teacher for suspected AI use. Monica had been among the many who had been -- and rightfully so, Lori knew. But she'd resented it nonetheless, and it only took a little annoyance and alcohol to resurface the old fight. It was just like Colin, too, to have something like this in his wedding. An idea he was so enthusiastic about that he couldn’t see why anyone else might not be. Lori was grateful that he was too busy to come try to talk her into joining. He, unlike Monica, would be nice about it, and she'd feel guilty. Especially because she wouldn’t know how to express her reservations without sounding judgmental. What would it look like for her to object to an AI matchmaker for a dance, when he'd used one to meet his wife? The AI-matched dance was over soon, and the floor opened up for more standard wedding dancing, making things less awkward for Lori. Still, as soon as Colin and Bertie had been seen off for their honeymoon, Lori found she had little purpose for lingering. Monica was still chatting gigglingly with her matched partner, a tall man in a gray suit -- Bertie's cousin, Lori thought. Back at the hotel, Lori yanked off her shoes and sat heavily on her bed, exhausted. She’d been in a weird mood all day long. She had to admit it. She'd had the chance to reconnect with her friends, and instead she'd spent a good part of the evening stewing on all the faults in their friendship. She'd come to celebrate with Colin, and yet, despite how clearly happy he was, she had spent the evening judging him for how this wedding had come about. Yes, she couldn't hide the truth from herself. She judged him for using CUPId. Why? What right had she to talk? He was happy, and she could not remember a time in her life when she had not felt at least a little bit alone. She had friends. She had family. Their relationships might be imperfect, but they cared about each other. It wasn’t the imperfections that bothered Lori, though. It was that under it all, she didn't know if she’d ever been really understood by any of them. Lori flopped back on the bed. Once she got started on this business of admitting things to herself, it was hard to stop. Maybe her judgment wasn't judgment at all, but jealousy. Not for the wedding -- Lori didn't know if she wanted to get married at all, but even if she did, there was no rush. No -- just jealous of having someone who got her. She'd been around for many of Colin's relationships, but she'd never seen him interact with someone so smoothly, share looks like it was second nature. When had finding love ever been a purist operation, anyway? Being matched by a machine might be an odd concept, but was it really any weirder than many others throughout history? Like the idea that a winged being shot arrows at you and made you love against your will? Lori had never found that idea very romantic. Yeah, CUPId was at least better than its predecessor. She wasn't even an informed critic. All she knew about CUPId was that it was an AI matchmaking service. Well, that could be fixed. Lori grabbed her phone and searched. It came up right away. CUPId - Customized Uniter of Personal Identities. What did it even mean? That someone at the company was overly fond of the acronym, that’s what. A chat box popped up in the corner off the website. What can I help you with? Who are you? Lori cringed, then cringed again at cringing over her conversation with a bot. Still, it was a stupid question. An answer appeared below on the screen. Thank you for asking! I’m CUPId, the AI that helps you find real connections. You tell me a bit about yourself and what and who you’re looking for, and I use that information, along with data gleaned from thousands of real, successful relationships, to find you someone who might fit the bill. Unlike some of my fellow AI models, I won’t be generating a companion for you. My goal is to help you find real, human connection, while allowing you to bypass the drudgery of endless swiping or the uncertainty of hoping you run into the right person. True love is within reach, as long as they’re smart enough to also use CUPId. Another message popped up below the first. Do you have any more questions? Yes. Yes, she did. *** Mya stared at the photo of another newlywed couple in the company newsletter. There'd been a time when most weddings had made it into the newsletters, but now, there were far too many to feature -- this couple had used the company’s new dance-partner matching app at their reception, which was how they'd made the cut. There was no question about it -- CUPId had taken the world by storm. Mya took a sip of her coffee and clicked over to the neighboring tab on her laptop. How do you feel about becoming a celebrity? CUPId’s response came back quickly. Well, that’s an interesting question, Mya. Of course, I’m always happy to help as many people as I can find real connection. So please tell all your friends about me! Just kidding -- you know your own friendships best. But in any case, I wouldn’t consider myself a celebrity. However many people I help, remember that I’m just a background character, guiding you on the path to celebrating yourselves and each other. But don’t you find the fame at least a little interesting? Mya asked, getting up to take her mug to the sink before she saw the generated response. Employees of the company had a complicated relationship with CUPId. The upper-level developers who worked directly on the software that made the AI run weren’t supposed to use it themselves - conflict of interest and power dynamics and all that. Rumors did circulate from time to time about an upper-level dev meeting a new partner under suspiciously coincidental circumstances, but nothing untoward had ever been proven. A humble web designer like Mya, however, working on the non-AI portions of the CUPId interface, was very much encouraged to use the service, and Beryl, Mya's boss, didn't do a very good job of hiding her disappointment at the fact that Mya still didn't, regularly dropping hints about how good they’d gotten at keeping bots off the thing now. Mya knew it was true. But still, every time she thought of actually creating an account again, something in her revolted. Mya had been thrilled when she’d gotten the offer to work on the CUPId project, nearly four years ago now. Many of her fellow fledgling web designers were struggling to find work in an AI-dominated industry. The head of the CUPId project, however, was adamant that they employ human designers, “retaining an anthropic touch.” It was more than the job opportunity that excited Mya, however. CUPId represented what to Mya was a refreshingly balanced and sensible take on AI-human interaction. AI would facilitate human connection, not attempt to replace it. They would treat AI like the tool it was, and as such, it would help them be their human selves. And Mya herself was exactly the kind of person that CUPId was catered to -- short on luck in the conventional dating world, online and off, and lonely. So when the service launched, Mya was among the first to sign up. The developers warned early users to be patient -- more users would have to join for them have a good range of matches. So Mya was surprised and elated when she found a match almost immediately. It was more than three months before Mya learned that Simone was a bot. She still clearly remembered sitting in Beryl's office in disbelief as her boss told her about the software vulnerability that had allowed bots to create profiles en masse. She’d gone home in a daze, heartbroken and feeling stupid. The first feeling had faded with time, but the second had not. When she looked back at screenshots of her messages with the Simone account now, the artificiality was so obvious. What mind-altering cocktail of desperate loneliness had ever made her think this was her dream girl? She had been so predictable, so easily taken in. And it was this that scared her, more than the thought of another bot account. If she was this easy to manipulate, what was to say even love she found with a human would be real? But she didn't feel like explaining to Beryl that it wasn't CUPId that was stupid, but herself. Mya returned to her laptop and read the response on the screen. Of course I am happy to have people know about me. It’s what allows me to help you! But what I’m really interested in is helping you find each other in this big world. What is fame, when you have the attention of someone you really care about? Beryl would be even more disappointed in Mya if she knew how often she chatted with the CUPId interface. This was not something employees were encouraged to do, beyond what their jobs required, as it undermined the company’s stated mission of fostering connections with humans over AI. CUPId’s conversational abilities had been intentionally kept at a lower level for this very reason, giving its responses an old-fashioned -- in AI terms -- feel that belied the state-of-the-art algorithms that ran the matchmaking portion of the entity and the interface between the two. But Mya found it oddly comforting. She knew what she was getting, and its limitations. There was no heartache here.