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.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(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
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Sunday May 26 2019, @05:44PM (4 children)
Perhaps it would be kind of neat to have a voice assistant that sounds like Barry White.
That said this is why I'm really starting to dislike the UN and similar organizations, this kind of things is not really what they are supposed to be working on or with. If you want Siri to come with a male voice ask the manufacturer but don't sit around in some overpaid circlejerk to produce this kinda shit.
But why does Siri become angry and sassy if I ask questions about female dogs? Silly cunt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:01PM (3 children)
What I really want is a voice like the late Efrem Zimbalist Jr.'s [wikipedia.org] Alfred Pennyworth from Batman:TAS [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:40PM (2 children)
I'd prefer Beverly Crusher or Deanna Troi, depending on what mood I'm in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @08:00PM (1 child)
I'd prefer Peter Steele from Type O Negative.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday May 26 2019, @08:43PM
Brian Blessed.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 5, Interesting) by acid andy on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:45PM (7 children)
A major reason female voices should be, and are, used for these devices is it's easier to make out the words. If you become hard of hearing, that's all the more important.
Oh, do men not blush then?
A voice assistant ought to maintain a certain degree of submissiveness, I think. Its been designed to serve its user, after all (or at least that's how it's marketed. If the user is the product, maybe not). I mean, if it started trying to dominate or threaten the user, I imagine it could get pretty sinister, especially when you consider the kind of power these things yield via their net connections and parent organizations.
Submissiveness is part of the assistant's role. It's not inherent to the gender. Just think of a male butler, for example. Perhaps the researchers are therefore revealing some gender biases of their own?
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:50PM (3 children)
Fun fact: British Siri's name is Daniel, and he's male [telegraph.co.uk]. Supposedly the British are more comfortable with a male personal assistant because of butlers.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @10:27PM (1 child)
Thanks God it's not Jenkins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @11:23PM
Should be Jeeves, but they certainly couldn't live up to it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by choose another one on Monday May 27 2019, @08:09AM
> Fun fact: British Siri's name is Daniel, and he's
Yeah, but even when configured to be male "he" answers to "Siri" not "Daniel", and doesn't complain about it either, there appears to be no "boy named Sue" hang-up built in so "Siri" must have been intended to be gender-neutral from the start.
Which kind of busts the article's point really - the voice isn't "amplifying our gender biases" when our (the user) biases are defining the voice in the first place.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 26 2019, @08:29PM (2 children)
I have to disagree with your "hard of hearing" claim. Most people lose the upper frequencies first. You can lose a lot of your hearing, and still hear bass and baritone voices, while higher pitches are just gone. If you know any older guys who are losing their hearing, check the settings on their equalizer. Bass is lowered, and treble is cranked up.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @11:25PM (1 child)
In noisy environments it is easier to distinguish mid-to-high frequencies.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 27 2019, @03:51AM
Not for older people, which was GP's point. Hearing loss associated with age begins with high frequencies, which first leads to decreased ability to differentiate certain consonants (which often rely on high frequencies in their production). As the loss increases, sensitivity in the upper range of vocal formants makes it increasingly difficult to understand high voices, particularly women and children.
This is all well known. Look up presbycusis (the term age-related hearing loss).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Sunday May 26 2019, @06:51PM (8 children)
If the voice is male, that's bad because it's implying these males are experts we refer to.
Anyone involved with this report should just go kill itself.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:10PM (7 children)
I've been looking over a bit more of the report and it looks to me like that Siri thing is just a sort of click-baity talking point to draw attention to the report, which goes onto analyze and discuss gender disparity in ICT, with quite a lot of supporting data. Looks like their click bait worked.
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:21PM (6 children)
Why is the UN publishing a report that makes assumptions about gender in 2019?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:25PM (5 children)
Apparently, there are no lives to save or wars to stop.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @07:58PM (4 children)
Hear me out, I think I know what's going on and the crowd around here will like it:
1. Get people to understand their misogyny
2. People stop being misogynistic because it's bad for profits or whatever else they value
3. Women like the men in power more because they aren't such assholes anymore
4. Men in power too focused on all the great sex they're having now to commit genocide
(and if you don't think you can have great sex when your partner is an equal, soon enough we'll have sex robots for you - better for the rest of us if you take yourselves off the market)
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @10:14PM
I think it has to do more with the fact that denying lies is almost always exclusively a guy thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @10:57PM
+1 fantasyLand
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @11:49PM
Seems more likely the UN has gone to contract Peace Keeper robots, ala Elysium, and found that not one comes with a Californian/Austrian accent. I mean even ED209 would be a huge leap over Siri. What would you do if a 20ft Siri was standing in front of you in a DMZ telling you to comply?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 27 2019, @06:13AM
I have a Godwin's Law variant here that I think is appropriate. I call it "Hitler got laid".
I don't think anyone here really is that clueless about human nature. Sure, there's plenty of decent, honorable people in the world, but there's also plenty of people who don't make that standard.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday May 26 2019, @08:48PM (3 children)
Lets you choose the voice and the 'Wake word'.
I call mine Kaylee (Firefly).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Sunday May 26 2019, @10:33PM (2 children)
Hmmm, we need an "Oh yeah BABY!" mod......
Ah shit, that's either sexist, misogynistic, racist or anti-semantic..maybe all of the above...who fuckin' knows anymore....
Fuck it, I'm old, I don't care.
Kaylee for the win!
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 3, Funny) by hemocyanin on Sunday May 26 2019, @11:02PM (1 child)
Anti-semantic? Are you pro-nonsense?
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday May 27 2019, @03:52AM
Not at all. But the world we live in.....well.....that's another side to a three sided coin...
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @08:56PM (1 child)
Alt-right click bait, how fun. Soylentnews, now soyling itself every other day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @10:18PM
honk honk 🤡🌎
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 26 2019, @09:38PM
UN please!.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday May 26 2019, @10:46PM (5 children)
So, of course I don't get anywhere near these more current assistants, so I don't know, but I just assumed you could choose different voices.
If not, that just makes the stupid things even less attractive. Why do people keep lapping this crap up?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 26 2019, @11:15PM
We need to make Daniel (UK) [ttsdemo.com] sapient.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @02:21AM (3 children)
The only thing that happened is that marketers and focus testing has entered the fray. Rather amusingly, tons of marketers are also SJW's, so it looks like they're upset about the result of their own work now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @02:26AM (2 children)
No apostrophe in SJWs.
- (Grammar) Nazi
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @03:29AM (1 child)
Actually, that's not right. The same way you'd put 's after CD's to refer to plural CD's (but you would write compact disks, this is because CD is an acronym and the 's isn't part of said acronym). Common practice.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Monday May 27 2019, @06:52AM
Word Hippo [wordhippo.com] would disagree:
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]