Alain de Botton: AI doesn’t kill love, it could rescue it

Those who speak with most terror of AI—and look nostalgically back to a time when the genie wasn’t out of the bottle—seem to be at risk of forgetting a not negligible detail: that humans, left to their own devices, are almost boundlessly unintelligent (obtuse, cruel, lacking perspective, unaware of their own true interests). If there was one artificial thing we might surely be in dire need of, then it is surely “intelligence”.

The sensible conversations in this area are largely focused on what AI will do to jobs, the economy, science. These are wonderful concerns, but let’s not forget one of the more stark statistics that psychology throws up. A person’s chances of satisfaction in their lives are overwhelmingly—some say up to 70 or 80 percent—down to the quality of their relationships. It’s whether or not things are working out with a partner that really, in the end, determines how happy we can be.

A visiting Martian would therefore be fascinated by how little formal care is given to this area. It’s treated as the fun, slightly silly side of life. All our major corporations are focused on moving concrete around and making sure we have enough toothpaste. There are no billion dollar companies looking, every day, at how we might get on better with our spouse and improve the tone of our apologies.

But in a better world, and perhaps in a world where the true possibilities of AI have been explored, a key development will necessarily be the exploitation of all the resources of AI to enable our relationships to flourish.

This is being written in a small room with a view onto a magnolia tree in north-west London in April 2026. The details matter for it is time to hazard a guess about the future. Very soon, as early as mid-2027 or ’28, relationships are going to be transformed in new and even more decisive ways by AI-powered machines—and the author suspects this not because he is an expert at tech, but because he understands just how painful (and unintelligent) current relationship reality happens to be.

In the future, we will—because we know how much unexamined love hurts—let AI help us do a better job of our personal lives. We’ll allow a device to listen to us every day, from morning till night. The idea might sound Orwellian but not if the data were to be very strictly controlled and entirely in our command (and encrypted immediately). On the basis of this, AI would give us recommendations, artfully whispered into our ears or sent as notifications on our phone, as to what to do next. It’s time to make an affirming statement, we’ll be told, or, if we want sex later tonight, we need to listen to their story now. There’s a brewing resentment about the weekend, so we need to stop the chat about football and zero in on the issue with our brother-in-law. And so on and so forth. As with so many other areas of human enterprise, we’ll invite AI in to remind us of our better instincts, and of the wisdom of crowds and years which eludes us in the moment, in the kitchen, with only our own frontal cortex drowsy from commuting and a second glass of wine.

We will allow AI, too, to rescue us from the mess of current online dating. We transitioned far too fast from the old dynastic way of choosing partners. For most of human history, it was our parents or our societies that told us who to marry. We had to get together with her because her father had a plow and our father had an ox or they were the Duke of Brabant and we were the Princess of Naples. But we did away with all that in the 19th century and now we get together with people because of “feelings.” Someone just gives us an amazing “feeling” inside us and now we’re off to Vegas to marry in two weeks. How romantic, says the gallery. But the realists know otherwise. Our instincts are as likely, perhaps even more likely, to get us into trouble as the old dynastic marriages did. We’re not very reliable judges of our own interests. Most of the people who feel right turn out not to be. So-called butterflies are normally a sign to flee for the hills. We have a very tenuous sense of what’s good for us.

So here too, by necessity, technology is going to step in. The dating apps of today are rudimentary affairs indeed. The best AI knows far better than they who really belongs with whom (and who, in the end, shouldn’t be with anyone yet or ever; a very important piece of self-awareness we should give space for). We shouldn’t fall in love with the platform, but learn to use it for what it could be: a useful tool to become better at love.

Romantics like to complain at this point: AI will kill romance. Have they stepped out and seen the carnage that presently goes on in the name of romance? The rest of us will gratefully accept any help that AI can give us.

If AI helps us even a little in this area (and it could be equally helpful around friendships and family ties), and the smart bet is that of course it will, then it will deserve to be counted as one of the most significant contributions to happiness ever devised. Our successors will wonder how we got by without it, and we’ll have to admit that we didn’t really—we just put on a very brave face, as people with toothache did in the 1340s.