Comment by BenFrantzDale
6 years ago
The idea, I think, is that it matters that/if we gender our digital servants—that as we use them more it will affect our sense of gender rolls. That Siri and Alexa are both female by default puts them in the stereotypical female-secretary roll.
I have Waze speak as a British male, of course then he sounds like a stereotypical butler. It would be fun if I could set it to be Batman or HAL9000, but it would probably get old.
And it's the same wrong idea as violent video games making children more violent. Both (a) fail to appreciate substantive causes and relationships, and (b) discount the nuanced contextual distinctions that people (even children) naturally make.
Aside from the motivations of the engineers (which are unclear and maybe even irrelevant), I think it's interesting technical work, including taking a stab at gender perception in speech patterns with a bold application.
I mean, to really address this problem, don't we need genderless employees in the workplace?
We already have them. I'm agender and I'm typing this from my workplace (during lunch).
The response to this AI voice demonstrates that a lot of people automatically hear any human(ish) voice as either female or male, one or the other. Similarly, people automatically recognise individuals as either female or male, one or the other. There's a very narrow band of presentation that won't be read automatically as one of those two options.
See how difficult it is to stop your brain from making automatic (possibly false) assumptions.
To be honest I don't understand what being agender means. I respect whatever presentation and choices you make for yourself even if I don't understand it.
I just don't think things having gendered presentation is an issue. There are many languages with a female sun, male moon, female Earth, male oceans, and so on.
I don't think making assumptions that are true of the vast majority is necessarily wrong. What's wrong is reacting negatively and rejecting someone like yourself who doesn't wish to participate in the concept of gender, and that's cool, but communication based on gender is still efficient in most cases.
I vote for Jeeves.
> That Siri and Alexa are both female by default puts them in the stereotypical female-secretary roll.
But isn't this happening only if some marxist is searching for this "problem"? I never considered it this way, until your comment.
It's like with the service OP is presenting... they are offering "solution" to made up problem.