While Robot Sophia has been on the agenda lately, on the other hand, developing artificial intelligence tools are causing the question “how much further will they go?” It makes us think broodingly. For example, while the poor quality visuals of people like DALL-E and Midjourney left our mouths open at first, now we see that visuals that are difficult to distinguish from human hands can be produced, especially with Midjourney.
It should not be forgotten that we have come a long way in terms of robots. In fact, sometimes when we look at the likes of Robot Sophia, we wonder “have we gone too far?” We can’t stop saying this. We see that these robots and the artificial intelligence tools we mentioned at the beginning are mostly women for some reason. But why?
Siri is one of the biggest examples of this.
Basically, Siri emerged with a female voice, and with the arrival of different languages, different types of male and female voices were also added. Even if we just look at the literal meaning, Siri is translated as “beautiful woman who leads to victory” in Scandinavian culture.
In a 2011 study by Karl F. MacDorman and his team, it was examined how men and women respond to incoming voices and which gender they prefer. In this study, in which male and female voices were played to male and female participants, the men stated that they preferred the female voice without any implicit implication. Women, on the other hand, preferred the female voice over the male voice, both explicitly and implicitly. It was later discussed that MacDorman’s research inspired Siri and Alexa.
As we know, there are many like Siri.
And almost all of them are women. Have you switched to computer? -at least a few months ago- you were greeted by Cortana. Samsung, on the other hand, had S Voice. Therefore, it is not difficult to think that companies choose this on purpose. When we look at most articles, we see that this is attributed to sexism. After all, Siri provides us with information that we are too lazy to look at and acts as our secretary.
Let’s take a look at another study. A 2009 study at the Boston Museum of Science found that men were more likely to donate to a robot with a female voice. But for women, voice appeared to make little difference.
Although it may seem a bit old, a study conducted in 1997 is also of great importance. In this research, it was seen that when we select the voice of a certain gender and present it to the users and that voice is listened to, expectations about the gender of that voice can be triggered in the minds of the users.
We always want to be on top of the electronic devices we have.
Although those devices make our lives easier, the fact that they are superior to us scares us, and the assistants who have a female voice with thoughts arising from sexism make us feel safe. At least that’s how WIRED’s Jessi Hempel summarized the issue.
There is also a softer side to this.
And that is our cultural biases. For example, Boston Dynamics and MIT robots are usually designed with masculine lines, since power-demanding jobs are mostly associated with men. We cannot directly say that this is the reason, but we have given these organizations as an example. On the other hand, since their empathy and communication skills are identified with women, Robot Sophia and artificial intelligence assistants also appear with female voices.
There are also those who try to break gender stereotypes.
Of course, we are not talking about forced work here. Because it is not difficult to see that the gender roles we see in the world of artificial intelligence and robots have transferred from our world to there. Because although it is difficult to trace the roots of our habits, we know that we, humans, shaped artificial intelligence and robots in the first place.
Apple gave Siri a new voice with the iOS 15.4 beta update. Moreover, this voice had no gender. In the official statement made by Apple, it was announced that the name of this voice was ‘Axios’.
Let’s leave our note.
While the cultural roles/restrictions imposed on both women and men show themselves in the virtual world, we have told you the possible reasons for this situation. Don’t be confused by the fact that we’ve talked about the roles themselves, as we don’t support these cultural limitations.
You can share your thoughts respectfully in the comments.
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