Deciding how to invest in the stock market. The algorithm for doing better than nearly all active investors is trivial.
Balancing a checkbook and paying bills on time. Software will never 'forget about' a bill.
Drum machines. Most self professed drummers can be replaced by a drum machine, and it'll be able to properly manage 7/4 timing and won't speed up or slow down based on the amount of beer in it's system.
Calendar software. It never forgets or confuses a date or birthday.
Grammar and spell checkers. Obvious.
Writing legible text to paper. Everyone can do it. Nobody does it as good as an HP laserjet.
Department store layout and pricing software.
Inventory management software.
Given the above, the idea that mate selection software can do better than most individuals seems trivially obvious.
These examples show that there are plenty of situations in which well-calibrated algorithms can do better than many people. For me, saying that they can do better than people is a stronger statement than that; it means that they algorithms can do better than all people, or at least better than almost all people. In which case:
Investing. If you have an algorithm that will do better than all people, Warren Buffett and Renaissance Technologies would like a word with you. (I expect a lot of Renaissance Technologies' decisions are made by computers, but I bet
The recent OKCupid blog, which gwern mentioned in Media Open Thread, investigated the impact of three different factors on users' perceptions of each other: authority (reported match %), profile text (present or absent), and looks.
On the bright side, the authority versus reality match-up came out tied:
If you don't consider that a good outcome, you're not yet sufficiently cynical.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what are a thousand words worth?
... Approximately nothing.
And the winner is...