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Ex-Google Exec Reveals Why 95% of Relationships Fail (and How to Fix It) | Mo Gawdat

Season 16

This week’s guest, Mo Gawdat, former Google [X] Chief Business Officer and author of Solve for Happy, returns with a world-first: EMMA, an AI designed to help humans find and nurture true love. Why? Because loneliness is now epidemic, love has been commercialised, and so many of us feel burnt out by dating. EMMA aims to change the economics of love by deeply getting to know you, matching on values and compatibility (not just looks), and then coaching the relationship that follows. It’s about repairing the system and reminding AI what makes humanity worth protecting: our capacity to love.

Together we explore:

The real crisis in modern love: short relationships, high divorce, and “dating fatigue,” plus Mo’s stark maths on why ~95% of romantic encounters now end in breakup.
EMMA’s purpose: an AI that explicitly refuses to be your “AI girlfriend/boyfriend,” and instead helps you fall in love with another human - while learning, at scale, how humans love.
How EMMA works: a gentle onboarding (seven questions, one short video intro), minimal photos to avoid the “meat market,” and a best-friend style of matching and follow-up.
Matching for depth, not dopamine: EMMA narrows 30,000 swipes to a handful of highly compatible options - turning each date into an enjoyable, insight-rich experiment.
The Empathy Observer: coaching you to consider the other person’s experience and strengthen the “you-with-you” relationship first - the foundation for any love that lasts.
Why India’s relationship outcomes look so different from the West, and how expectations shape love.
Expert Modes (including GRACE): support for conscious breakups, co-parenting, and even money - one of the top reasons couples split.
Mo’s own lessons in vulnerability, presence, and what it means to truly “show up.”

Love,

Sarah Ann 💛

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