Transcript
Mastodon posts by @trenchworms@eldritch.cafe:
super revealing of the misogyny inherent to the space that “AI assistants” stopped being given feminine-coded names the moment tech chuds thought they were developing higher levels of autonomy
“i TELL Alexa what to do. i COLLABROATE with Chudbot. i will not reflect on this hierarchy at all.”
You must log in or # to comment.
The correct pronoun to use was always “it”.
Here are my rules for avoiding companies/services based on name:
- No first names
- No “-ly”, “-ify”, or similar
- No baby talk
- No glossary terms
Follow these rules and you’ll avoid 90% of slop. Not specifically AI slop, human slop too.
This is an extremely American English-centric take. The gendering of robot assistants varies widely across different cultures. It’s a heavily studied topic with lots written down for you to learn from. But you’re not intellectually curious, you’re just ignorant and want to make up pseudo-scientific crap to fit your preconceived biases.
It’s an observation of culture in a part of the world, how is that relevant?
Shitty way to say it, but you’re right. I used to work on mobile industrial robots, the sorts of machines that deliver parts in factories, clean rooms, semiconductor fabs, etc. These are industrial machines and have about as much gender as an office printer. We sold them in countries all over the world. At some point we added an off the shelf text to speech library so that to robots could communicate with non-technical people and say things like, “Excuse me” or “I’m lost”. It supported a bunch of languages and could use a male or female voice.
People in different countries had shockingly strong opinions about what gender the voice should have. The US, Canada, France and UK customers wanted them to be female. Germany and the Spanish speaking countries wanted male. Korea and China wanted male IIRC, but Japan insisted on female.
I’m sure this says something about the culture in all of those places, but I have no idea what.
Wat. Link some studies please.
Top level comments on the internet engage in a discussion of misogyny and patriarchy constructively and in good faith challenge:
COLLABROATE
It’s ‘collabroate’ when the oblique complement of the verb is masculine. It’s ‘collabriate’ when the complement is feminine.
This may be the first attestation of object gender agreement in English
Literally only one AI assistant Im aware of was given a feminine persona out the gate and thats Alexa which is Amazon’s.
Every single other one has been purposefully kept gender neutral.
They intentionally gave Siri a gender neutral name ages ago cuz you can pick what its voice sounds like
Same for gemini, copilot, gpt…
Only 1 out of many agents had a female name, and it wasnt “tech bros” that named it.
And only one tool has been given a male name, Claude
Siri is a girls name, though. In like ten different languages. It was the 12th most popular girls name in 2009, 2 years before Apple launched Siri in 2011. I understand that it was named for SRI, but it was still a feminine name.
The default voice is also fem
As someone who used dude-Siri when I still carried Apple hardware, people always asked why I changed it.
deleted by creator
Siri is definitely a gender neutral name, Ive literally met more dudes named Siri than gals when out traveling, especially in eastern Europe.
I know a guy named Aubrey, but what difference does that make? Apple named the product in the USA, where the masculine form of the name is extremely uncommon, especially since 2011. The name was chosen because it was a play on the SRI technology and because it is a girl’s name.
Also, Pinto means tiny penis in Brazil.
The name was chosen because it was a play on the SRI technology and because it is a girl’s name.
The name was actually chosen because it was originally going to be the name of one of the founder’s soon to be daughter, but then his child ended up being a son so he gave the name to the machine instead as his “second child” effectively…
So it had literally nothing to do with whatever point the poster was trying to make, and everything to do with a sense of paternal love if literally anything, lol… People will find literally fucking anything to mald over, even making shit up to try and make it sound right.
Oh yes I completely agree with you that the OP point is total horseshit. Things get named in the moment based on thousands of factors. Misogyny might be one of the influences in the moment, but I don’t believe there is a trend in the industry to avoid feminine names for AI products.
cortana was named after the video game AI, which was definitely depicted as female
Yeah but also is a heavy counterpoint to the point in the post, because Cortana was already a “higher level of autonomy” AI in her first depiction (Halo games), from the start, and Microsoft named it after the character because Microsoft bought Halo and was just doing a nod to the character… So thats literally an outright counterpoint to whatever mental gymnastics the poster of the post was doing…
Siri’s default voice is female and all of the early advertising used that same female presentation.
Cortana was female.
I didn’t know if Google’s original voice assistant had a name, but it’s voice was also distinctly female — and still is, Google maps (and other android apps with voice assistance, probably) continues to use that same voice.
Cortana was female.
I pointed this out in another post but Cortana is also a “higher level” AI in her depiction origins (Halo) which is inherently a counterpoint to the OP’s post anyways…
Her depictions in Halo, sure. But the Cortana on your laptop wasn’t outsmarting ancient alien AIs or helping you murder hordes of genocidal aliens. She was there to make calendar appointments and search Amazon for the cheapest toilet paper. That’s a big fucking difference.
You… understand the Cortana on windows is literally named as a reference to Cortana from Halo right? Because Microsoft owns Halo…? They named it from her… So its the same “Cortana” so to say.
Its a fundamental counterpoint to the OPs post, because it wasn’t made feminine as some kind of mental gymnastics misogyny thing, its just a nerdy reference to an already existing character Microsoft had the rights to, its not that deep.
In my experience, GPS voices also tend to be feminine by default.
I think it’s less true now than it once was, but I remembering hearing somewhere that pre-recorded messages on trains/subways/in stations tend to use feminine voices for information, and masculine voices for instructions.
There are definitely still times on the London Underground where you’ll hear announcements that switch in the middle, and that does usually seem to be the pattern.
(I realise this doesn’t really apply to GPSes, but your comment is what reminded me, so. 😅)
Defs true for NSW, Australia railways
Man says “smoking is not permitted”, woman says “the next station is foo”
I first noticed as a child and it is one of the first times I remember thinking that society wants women to be servile.
It has been studied that people respond better for gendered voices in those contexts, but yeah that’s probably because it’s been preprogrammed into people. It’s weird when you notice it in the wild.
Not preprogrammed, because patriarchy
Yeah sorry I wasn’t clear enough, when I say preprogrammed I don’t mean innate human behaviour, I mean societal conditioning over the entire lifespan of a person.
Ah, fair enough.
I had my hackles up 'cause some people like pretend that gender roles/perception are somehow encoded in our DNA
but I remembering hearing somewhere that pre-recorded messages on trains/subways/in stations tend to use feminine voices for information, and masculine voices for instructions.
Dunno if this is still the case, but this was definitely true of the subway system in NYC when I lived there.
Female voice: the next stop is [x] street
Male voice: stand clear of the closing doors!
Also, Gemini is decidedly masculine, as it refers to the male twins Castor and Pollux, the plural of the latin geminus.
Etymology is not the same as meaning.
True. But the meaning is the constellation, and the star sign, which means twins.
It doesn’t have a masculine connotation in modern use, though.
Myke Horton would like a word.
Does Bixby count?
It counts as an assistant, and its a gender neutral name cuz its a place name, not a person name.
Its name was specifically chosen to be weird and different to avoid the “accidently triggers in common convo” problem that other assistants tend to have
I just called my Open Claw bot a cutesy animal name.
Purely an anecdote, but one of my colleagues refers to the robot as “Claudette”. I insist on not giving it a gender or anthropomorhising it, it’s an it, and I’ll keep misgendering/deadnaming the robot forever.
I feel you. I definitely feel the Skynet/HAL route is more appropriate. I’ve started modifying my prompts to make sure the LLM does not sound like a person. How they try to be all friendly, flattering etc is so irksome.
I call it clod. That’s gender neutral.
They call the honest ones female names and the blatantly lying ones male names!
