Emmy Martin , The New York Times; In San Francisco’s A.I. Boom, a First Date Has Become an Interview
"San Francisco’s A.I. boom has drawn a wave of young ambitious people who are now reshaping the city’s dating life. Start-up founders and engineers are dating less because they are working more as they try to build A.I. products and establish their fortunes, many said. So when they date, they bring a high-stakes mind-set to it, which means a first coffee can feel like a final-round interview...
Founders “don’t want to waste time, so you only go on a date when you really feel there’s something to explore,” said Mr. Agarwal, who works long hours. Many A.I. start-up workers keep “996” schedules — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week — a norm borrowed from China’s tech scene.
Joyce Zhang, 32, a dating coach in San Francisco who charges $5,000 a month, works exclusively with tech founders, she said. A former product manager at the payments company Stripe, she coaches clients using the tech vocabulary they already think in — their “top of funnel” (the raw pool of prospects) and their “conversion rate” of dates that actually happen.
Her clients approach dating as any other problem to be solved with money, Ms. Zhang said. Some have connected their dating-app data to spreadsheets to track their matches; others obsess over gaming the apps’ algorithms.
Clients also run their replies to dates through A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT, she said. Some share their entire dating history with ChatGPT and ask the chatbot to diagnose their patterns. In those cases, Ms. Zhang said, she spends the coaching sessions pushing the techies toward trusting their intuition. Her job, she said, is to help them overcome their “blind spots.”"
