Societies around the world had forever suffered hunger, poverty, poor water quality, sickness and traffic congestion. But from 2025, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) made real inroads to addressing these and by 2050 it seemed impossible to imagine just how we had lived without using these Artificial Intelligence Decision making tools – or AIDs.

Romance is not dead

Rosie Green was in shock. Prepping the latest press release for Lovestuck, the 56-year-old senior media officer for the dating AID's holding company G(r)eek Enterprises was uncharacteristically at a loss. Lovestuck is built on a lie, she said to herself for the hundredth time since she’d uncovered this fact just an hour ago. And everything I’ve been writing for a decade is a lie. ‘Using only data for choosing a mate-a.’ ‘Let statistical calculation boost your love equation.’ Really? How did they not tell me? Am I complicit though I didn't know? What about my marriage? Stunned by the enormity of it all, she sat still for a moment and pondered what to do.

The problem, she realized, had much to do with the sheer scale of Lovestuck. Quite simply, the relationships of millions of people around the world would be at risk, maybe even her own. Almost half of all couples in new romantic relationships in Greater London, for instance, had been matched through the Lovestuck system – resulting in 20,000 weddings a year – and with a five-year ‘still together’ rate of over 80 per cent it was easy to see why.