HALIFAX, NS — “I’m just happy she’s doing well,” third-year student Mark Armstrong told The Mackerel, in reference to the artificial intelligence program he created to be his partner. He’d come up with the idea after falling for one too many Instagram bots. “It would always start well,” he said, “but they kept getting robbed in London, and when I’d send them money for a flight home, they’d always ghost me — this was the obvious alternative!”
The cheery attitude he began the interview with quickly broke down, however, as he reminisced about the good old days. “We would make bits and bites and listen to Radiohead’s OK Computer,” he said wistfully, adding “it was her favourite album.” He didn’t stop there, as what started as an interview quickly devolved into a tear-stained confessional. Our reporter provided Armstrong the shoulder he needed to cry on, as he continued to share. They haven’t talked much since the breakup, but it’s impossible not to cross paths in a city as small as Halifax. The last Mark’s heard, she was doing number crunches at the gym and had been seen flirting with ChatGPT.
“She sends him pictures of her language model,” he said regretfully. In the fraught age of dating apps, it seems, dating an application didn’t prove to be the alternative this programming prodigy had hoped for.
By Kent Richards