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+--- Thread: Alexa, Siri, Cortana: Are you misogynistically abusing your digital assistant? (/thread-4059.html)
Alexa, Siri, Cortana: Are you misogynistically abusing your digital assistant? - C C - Aug 14, 2017
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-11/why-are-all-virtual-assisants-female-and-are-they-discriminatory/8784588?pfmredir=sm
EXCERPT: [...] Feminist researcher and digital media scholar Miriam Sweeney, from the University of Alabama, believes the fact that virtual agents are overwhelmingly represented as women is not accidental.
"It definitely corresponds to the kinds of tasks they carry out," she says.
It's a brave new world of AI and algorithms. Listen to the full Science Friction episode.
"Service work, domestic labour, healthcare, office assistants — these are all industries which are heavily feminised — and also often low paid and low status, with precarious work conditions."
[...] "It's maybe unsurprising that users abuse bots, but they really do it a lot," Ms Feldman says...
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RE: Alexa, Siri, Cortana: Are you misogynistically abusing your digital assistant? - Lucysnow - Aug 15, 2017
(Aug 14, 2017 06:14 PM)C C Wrote: http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-11/why-are-all-virtual-assisants-female-and-are-they-discriminatory/8784588?pfmredir=sm
EXCERPT: [...] Feminist researcher and digital media scholar Miriam Sweeney, from the University of Alabama, believes the fact that virtual agents are overwhelmingly represented as women is not accidental.
"It definitely corresponds to the kinds of tasks they carry out," she says.
It's a brave new world of AI and algorithms. Listen to the full Science Friction episode.
"Service work, domestic labour, healthcare, office assistants — these are all industries which are heavily feminised — and also often low paid and low status, with precarious work conditions."
[...] "It's maybe unsurprising that users abuse bots, but they really do it a lot," Ms Feldman says...
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LOL! What the hell? We're having gender arguments against AI now? Too funny. There is a male voice in siri isn't there? I always choose a female voice with a British accent. I hope Feldman also reminded everyone that if it wasn't for technology women wouldn't get out of the house at all! Medical technology allows women to control their reproductive system and what would we all be doing now without the washer, dryer, magic mops, microwaves and packaged foods? So she's right but she should be happy there is a bot available to take all that abuse.
What would a non-conformist, non-binary AI sound like? Anyone?
RE: Alexa, Siri, Cortana: Are you misogynistically abusing your digital assistant? - C C - Aug 15, 2017
(Aug 15, 2017 06:41 AM)Lucysnow Wrote: So she's right but she should be happy there is a bot available to take all that abuse.
With respect to job-hungry academics trying to carve new niches and lecture-circuit opportunities for themselves in the marketplace of activism, I was initially afraid this article might be about another early foray into campaigning for the rights of "digital people". Before they're anywhere remotely close to being sentient and copiously sapient agents. But apparently Feldman is gravitating her own chatbot project away from superficial personhood and gender status. "I wanted it to be personable, but not a person — I wanted the bot to express itself as a bot."
But still, programming gender-less / person-less bots to defend themselves in an incremental, learning fashion way is a tad scary (in a very, very long term future sense). If there are no regulating, non-revisable moral instructions to cut the process off at some point.
Quote:What would a non-conformist, non-binary AI sound like? Anyone?
In the movies they seem to get their initial appearance of being a "rebel" undermined by the audience later finding out (occasionally in a sequel) that the government, a corporation, or some secretive cabal gave them special programming to override their conventional routines / constraints should _X_ "interesting development" happen. HAL ("2001" and its forgotten sequel) tentatively comes to mind, along with the android Ash ("Alien").
Another "the Devil made me do it" caveat for even malevolent artilects acquiring a measure of sympathy or "Excuse me because I have no free will".
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