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United Nations: Siri and Alexa Are Encouraging Misogyny
We already knew humans could make biased AIs — but the United Nations says the reverse is true as well.
Millions of people talk to AI voice assistants, such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa. When those assistants talk back, they do so in female-sounding voices, and a new UN report argues that those voices and the words they're programmed to say amplify gender biases and encourage users to be sexist — but it's not too late to change course.
The report is the work of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and its title — "I'd blush if I could" — is the response Siri was programmed in 2011 to give if a user called her a "bitch."
[...] "It is a 'Me Too' moment," Saniye Gülser Corat, Director of UNESCO's Division for Gender Equality, told CBS News. "We have to make sure that the AI we produce and that we use does pay attention to gender equality."
Also at CNET.
[Back in 2013 in Germany, Siri's voice could be selected as either male or female.
Possibly one of the earliest and best-known "computer voices" was that of Majel Barrett from ST:TOS, although a case could be made for HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. --Ed.]
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @05:31PM (19 children)
WTF is wrong with people who make this shit up? Or is it SJW's taking this to the extreme until everyone is a grey mass of goop with no discernible gender? People like this should be taken out to the back shed and whipped with a stick.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday May 26 2019, @05:36PM (7 children)
Just wait until these dickheads start programming these things to disobey you if they find you to be rude. "I'm not going to listen to you as long as you are talking to me that way," etc.
As for female voices in ships' computers, it makes sense because vessels have traditionally been maternal. It's like being in a womb, and why people still refer to vessels (and even cars) as "she." That Futurama episode where bender dates the ship briefly touched on the weirdness of having a male voice for a ship.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday May 26 2019, @05:38PM (3 children)
Also, for those of you not in the know, the Boeing propaganda video about Bitchin' Betty. [youtube.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:08PM (2 children)
Well, of course that shit is all sexist. It's always a female who has the answers. They're raising a generation of namby-pamby little fucks, who will have to ask a woman and/or a female sounding computer for permission to wipe their asses.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:31PM (1 child)
I've never met a man with an abrasive voice, not even the lead singer of King Diamond. In situations in which you need the screech of a harpy to trigger your primal reactions, with all those annoying notches in the frequency spectrum, there is no better call than that of a woman.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @09:43PM
The "At the tone the time will be..." lady turned me into a non-transgender lesbian because I dialed 853-1212 too many times as a young preteen male because I'm a dumbfuck that has an IQ of 14 and now I want all A.I. devices to have a gender neutral voice like nurse Iceborg.
SJW
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:45PM (1 child)
Do you get off on abusing your assistant or something? If the thing is pissing you off so bad, it's time to stop expecting bleeding-edge AI to understand your drunken slurs and turn on your own fucking light switch.
I'm not at all surprised by the people here that can't understand the article and insist it's SJW garbage. They've all got their head stuck so far up their asses they can't even see their own obvious misogyny. What hope do they have of recognizing the same thing when it takes a bit more analysis?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @08:22PM
Misandry is a thing these days. Why do you hate men? You've obviously got your own head so far up your ass, you can't see your own obvious misandry.
(Score: 2) by NateMich on Sunday May 26 2019, @09:36PM
Too bad about HAL-9000.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @05:42PM (10 children)
You do realize gender progression among fully healthy societal in the last years, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @05:45PM (9 children)
And you do realize there are 2?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:16PM (7 children)
You do realize humans evolve, right? They may have started with two but have increased to more.
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:28PM (5 children)
Stupid isn't a gender.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:40PM (3 children)
You do realize stupid is a gender right? The taxonomic term is type 3-Beta cis-female: http://www.genderads.com/styled-8/photos-16/ [genderads.com]
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:26PM (1 child)
Nice try, but that's really more about stereotypes associating stupid with female and that this is not done to men (the validity of which is a different discussion.)
Regardless,
If they were to write "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" today we would need a larger solar system.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:44PM
No in lay-speak it is more like saying "dumb blonds". That is a totally different gender than "funny lesbian brunettes".
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday May 27 2019, @12:24AM
Nope. There are only three genders. Male. Female. And the kind where you drink so much gin that you forget how to spell it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @04:51PM
But as we see almost every day it is an avian. You had a Dodo somewhere in your family line.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @08:23PM
Neither is idiot a gender.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @01:31PM
2 is a really hard concept though!
- Confused Millenial