Marriages and births are falling sharply in Japan. So much so that the government plays matchmaker and offers services that use artificial intelligence to help couples form.
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To try to revive marriage and births in Japan, the government is proposing to help singles accompany them in their quest for a soul mate, using artificial intelligence to more quickly find partners who are “compatible” with their expectations. One by one, all the large local authorities in the country are joining this movement which is pushed by the government. Since last December, the Tokyo municipality has started offering this type of service. The idea is to help single people who are struggling to identify their soul mate. Studies show that people who cannot find a partner through traditional marriage agencies often have somewhat limited choices. They get stuck on a few criteria. For example, they want a person in a fairly limited age category, or working in very specific professions, and the potential candidates are then few in number.
The idea of the authorities is to broaden these choices and for this, they will call on artificial intelligence platforms which will be capable of managing dozens of factors and better understanding the personality and desires of the candidates. at the wedding to offer them lots of potential partners. And the government now has a national budget to fund some of this digital intermediation work.
More or less intrusive services
To teach this ChatGPT of love to know you better to find the right partner, several solutions are tested. In many communities, you will have to answer long questionnaires, up to 100 questions. It’s quite classic and the platform will then automatically compare your answers with those of other registered people and find matches. In Ehime Prefecture, the service will be a little more intrusive. It will also ask you to access your Internet search history, whether on your smartphone or on your computer. It’s not about judging you, but seeing what your interests really are. It helps the machine find you a partner.
The Japanese state feels obliged to play cupid because the number of marriages is collapsing in Japan. Last year, there were fewer than 500,000 unions in the country. This is half as much as in the early 1980s. In other countries, this would not necessarily be a problem. But in Japan, fewer marriages automatically mean fewer babies, because society remains very conservative and still takes a very dim view of births outside of marriage. Here, less than 2% of babies are born out of wedlock. The government is therefore playing the cupid to try to recover the birth rate which is collapsing very quickly.