In San Francisco’s A.I. Boom, a First Date Has Become an Interview
When there is A.I. to build, who has time for romance? Techies are going out less and expecting more on each date — including a family health history.
Mehul Agarwal, a co-founder of the artificial intelligence start-up Koyal, has a goal. He wants to find a wife before he gets rich.
The 24-year-old says he wants to be loved before the money comes, so he never has to wonder whether a partner is attracted to him or his success. But he has strict criteria.
A potential girlfriend must be smart, Mr. Agarwal said, adding that “someone who went to Stanford or M.I.T. is great.” She must be beautiful, which he is careful to distinguish from “hot,” a term he considers shallow. She must be kind, and in possession of a personality, “which is very, very hard when in San Francisco,” he said. And finally, she has to like him back.
Mr. Agarwal moved to San Francisco a year ago, when his A.I. filmmaking company, which has raised $3.4 million, joined the start-up accelerator Y Combinator. This year, he has been on a handful of dates. On one, which took two months to schedule, Mr. Agarwal said, he and his date were both exhausted from their jobs — she worked at an A.I. start-up, too — and they were so practiced at professional small talk that the evening felt less like a date than a networking meeting.
“What I’ve told my parents is if I’m 28 and haven’t found someone, then I would love to enter in the arranged marriage circuit,” said Mr. Agarwal, who has never had a girlfriend.
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.
