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UN Report Says Companies are Making Voice Assistants that Promote Gender Biases

posted by martyb on Sunday May 26 2019, @05:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the voices-carry dept.

takyon writes:

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.]

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday May 26 2019, @05:38PM (3 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday May 26 2019, @05:38PM (#847927) Homepage

    Also, for those of you not in the know, the Boeing propaganda video about Bitchin' Betty. [youtube.com]

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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:08PM (2 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:08PM (#847933) Journal

    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)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:31PM (#847936) Homepage

      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

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @09:43PM (#847994)

        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