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+--- Thread: Article Is there a sinister side to the rise of female robots? (/thread-14474.html)
Is there a sinister side to the rise of female robots? - C C - Aug 8, 2023
When we give AI a humanoid form, we typically choose the robot to have feminine characteristics. Are we playing on stereotypes?
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230804-is-there-a-sinister-side-to-the-rise-of-female-robots
INTRO: There is a popular idea that artificial intelligence (AI) is out to get us. It was this public image problem that the United Nations was recently trying to address at its AI for Good conference in Geneva.
The event in July was intended promote AI to help solve global problems, and it was described as the largest-ever gathering of humanoid robots.
There was Ai-Da (the "world's first ultra-realistic humanoid robot artist") and Grace (the "world’s foremost nursing assistant robot") as well as Sophia, Nadine, and Mika. There was even a rock star robot, Desdemona.
All of these androids have one thing in common – they are all female by design. So why is it that creators typically choose to give their robots feminine characteristics?
It is often argued that the choice to make AI voice systems female is rooted in gender bias. But sometimes there is a more innocent reason for the sex a designer gives their robot: they have modelled it on themselves.
This is the case with Nadine, whose creator Nadia Magnenat Thalmann describes her as a "robot selfie". Meanwhile, Geminoid, the only robot at the conference that was explicitly male, is the spitting image of its maker, Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro.
One of the keynote speakers at the conference was Ai-Da, an AI machine which can draw, paint and sculpt, and is also a performance artist.
Lisa Zevi, head of operations for the Ai-Da project, tells the BBC that in this particular case, there was a good reason for giving Ai-Da a broadly female look. "Female voices are typically very underrepresented in both the art and technology spaces," she says. "We want to give a voice to those underrepresented groups effectively." (MORE - details)
Unedited coverage of conference (video): https://youtu.be/m9IN14e-PLk
"AI Is For Good" conference (edited) ... https://youtu.be/T80yQHmqp6o