Nov 14, 2014 04:49 AM
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/were-se...ard-robots
EXCERPT: ...But what’s weirder than our insistence on assigning gender to non-sentient machines is that we then sometimes treat them differently as a result. We’re sexist to robots. It would be funny in its absurdity, if it didn’t so harshly reflect the prejudices already ingrained in human society, and risk entrenching them even further.
Take for instance a study published last year that asked participants to interact with a robot security guard, a stereotypically male occupation in the human world. Half of the participants met a robot that was given the typically male name “John,” and the other half met a robot with the typically female name “Joan.” John had a male text-to-speech voice, and Joan a female voice, but otherwise the robot remained identical. After doing some security tasks, like detecting an intruder on CCTV, the participants rated the robots.
They rated John higher than Joan. He was considered more useful and more acceptable as a security bot than his female twin.
It’s a curious experiment, and the results are rage-inducingly reminiscent of past findings that have shown a similar gender bias when we judge male and female humans....
EXCERPT: ...But what’s weirder than our insistence on assigning gender to non-sentient machines is that we then sometimes treat them differently as a result. We’re sexist to robots. It would be funny in its absurdity, if it didn’t so harshly reflect the prejudices already ingrained in human society, and risk entrenching them even further.
Take for instance a study published last year that asked participants to interact with a robot security guard, a stereotypically male occupation in the human world. Half of the participants met a robot that was given the typically male name “John,” and the other half met a robot with the typically female name “Joan.” John had a male text-to-speech voice, and Joan a female voice, but otherwise the robot remained identical. After doing some security tasks, like detecting an intruder on CCTV, the participants rated the robots.
They rated John higher than Joan. He was considered more useful and more acceptable as a security bot than his female twin.
It’s a curious experiment, and the results are rage-inducingly reminiscent of past findings that have shown a similar gender bias when we judge male and female humans....