Man vs Woman vs Machine The paradox of technology on loneliness. Can social care robots help young people to feel less lonely? Artificial Intelligence is a subject that is drenched in contrasts. Will it be good or evil? Male or female? It seems to divide people to think in opposites, and now, it has been linked with gender roles and stereotyping. The polarisation of machine learning is evident especially in the service industry, and the most common theme I came across in my research was the discussion about male and female values that are programmed into intelligent machines. AI can be a helpful tool for improvements, and since it learns from us, then why do we need to programme machines to think in the same male vs female mindset by attaching gender roles to AI?
Bias and stereotypes
Gendered AI
Technology is commonly known as a playground
If we look at the example of ‘Her’ a movie by
for men. Women hold just 16% of ICT specialist
Spike Jonze, it becomes apparent that the usage
roles in the EU, meaning that the majority of AI,
of Scarlett Johansson’s voice for the personal
in Europe alone, is being designed by men. This
servant can raise some eyebrows and draw
leaves room for a narrow-minded approach to
parallels with AI, women and the sex industry. It’s
design and causes gender bias in programming.
this type of stereotyping that women are here to
The characteristics of women, that are considered
serve men and need to act a certain way, that
stereotypical and offensive, are taught to our
causes upset. But if digital assistants are given
service bots and are accompanied by a seductive
female voices, it could also be because the
female voice as if to reference that women are
female voice is more helpful to listen to, whereas
more suited to serve. I read that “Part of the
a male voice is authoritative. If AI is being
problem with sexism in artificial intelligence
used by people who long for a connection and
appears to be that there aren’t enough women
communication, such as Theodore in ‘Her’, then
involved in its creation.” However, does it really
it makes sense that he is reaching out to someone
matter who programmes AI or whether it has male
of the opposite sex. Issues of portraying women
or female gender roles attached to it in the first
in the wrong way, in my opinion, have nothing to
place?
do with it. If I, as a woman, would have my own digital assistant, it would probably be male and help me out with accounting tasks. That doesn’t 72