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posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 25 2019, @03:44AM   Printer-friendly
from the better-safe-than-sorry dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 25 2019, @09:13AM (2 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday November 25 2019, @09:13AM (#924449) Homepage
    I looked at the raw data, and there's no attempt to control for other character traits apart from ball-scratching. How does this correlate with religiousity, for example - do people imagine the existance of entities who give a fuck in seemingly unrelated contexts?
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
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  • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday November 25 2019, @04:54PM (1 child)

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Monday November 25 2019, @04:54PM (#924571)

    Replying to your sig.
    Best description of God I ever heard was from the movie The Island.

    James McCord speaking to the clone Lincoln Six Echo when he asks:

    "What is God?"

    "You know when you wish real hard for something?"

    "God is the guy who ignores you."

    --
    Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 26 2019, @02:12AM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday November 26 2019, @02:12AM (#924754) Homepage
      Mine's an adaptation from the 1972 Peter O'Toole film /The Ruling Class/, which despite its age, and being an absurdist fiction, is remarkably current, almost prescient.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves