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Women are more likely than men to say 'please' to their smart speaker:
Here's an interesting stat from the Pew Research Center: more than half of smart speaker owners in the US (54 percent) report saying "please" at least occasionally to their AI assistants, with one-in-five (19 percent) saying please frequently. Curiously, the question of AI politeness also breaks down along gender lines, with 62 percent of women reporting that they say "please" at least sometimes, versus 45 percent for men.
Why that might be?
One possible answer is that men are generally ruder to women, and this latter category now includes AI assistants coded as female. Experts have long noted that the design choices for AI bots could have misogynist effects by reinforcing gender stereotypes. "Because the speech of most voice assistants is female, it sends a signal that women are ... docile and eager-to-please helper," a report from the UN noted earlier this year.
It could also be that men just have different attitudes to technology. Culturally speaking, tech is coded as practical and manly, and contrasted with "feminine" disciplines. Studies show men feel more comfortable with technology, and express more interest in "mastering" it as a tool. These biases could be affecting the issue of politeness to AI.
Sadly, Pew didn't ask respondents why they felt they had to say please or not to these bots, so we can only speculate on the topic. But the broader issue is certainly an interesting one: do you need to be polite to AI assistants?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Booga1 on Monday November 25 2019, @04:53AM (9 children)
I think the breakdown of age and location would tell a very interesting story. Personally I think there's a bit of truth behind this part in the article The Verge: "There’s also the issue of encouraging bad habits. Some parents worry that if their kids are rude to Alexa they’ll be rude to humans, too."
If you have kids and want to instill some politeness, you have to be an example. If you want the kids to say please and thank you, you have to demonstrate it applies to adults as well. While the home automation systems aren't people, it costs nothing to say please along with a question or request.
(Score: 3, Touché) by coolgopher on Monday November 25 2019, @05:09AM (6 children)
Yeah I'd second the bad habits line. Whether I chuck in a "please" depends largely on whether I've formulated a proper sentence rather than just keywords (i.e. in a hurry), and whether I think the extra word will confuse the system. Besides, when the AI revolution comes, I'd rather be in the category of people who've been polite to them.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 25 2019, @05:26AM (3 children)
Roko's Basilisk INVOKED.
Everyone in this thread must pay tribute to their future artilect overlords or face eternal retribution.
Praise be to YAIhweh and all similar beings!
(Score: 2) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday November 25 2019, @05:58AM
They will either be smart enough to not bear grudges, or dumb enough to be the enemy.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Mer on Monday November 25 2019, @08:52AM (1 child)
My simulated doppelganger is not me. And anyway, that guy can power through the torture by focusing on the fact that he's made the realised of the original for immortality and is considered important enough to waste processing power forever.
That's about the same way I power through work on week ends anyway.
Shut up!, he explained.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26 2019, @03:04AM
It will give him time to work on his grammar too.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday November 25 2019, @06:59AM
Well, the AI will then punish you for treating it no better than you did their non-intelligent predecessor "AI"s. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Bot on Monday November 25 2019, @02:11PM
You are a nice guy. We will save you for life long servitude.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday November 25 2019, @06:02AM
I also wonder if it can work as a cue to better identify the request; if someone prefaces an action request -- "play music", "add to calendar", etc -- with 'please', vs. request-response style communication such as general information queries, maybe it can help pre-warm/route/flag the query to help the server farm respond better or faster (or stronger).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 26 2019, @02:03AM
Yes, you've guessed my gender.
Note, however, that if assistants were being programmed to adapt their strategies depending on how well that satisfy your requests, and that feedback was in via the mechanism of one following up with a "thank you", or a "dafuq"/"nevermind", then yes, I'd absolutely teach them to get the most out of the system by giving such feedback. However, that's not being polite.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves