The ghost in the machine, in drag

There’s no real evidence that any of these characters are the gender people assume them to be. They borrow the voices of real men or women, but playing back feminine voices from a database doesn’t make a machine female – if I play Cat Power on my iPod it doesn’t start ovulating.

That is Martin Robbins in The Guardian, on why we insist giving R2D2, HAL, and other droids in life and film, a gender. Funny but also poignant:

Back in our galaxy, companies have been quick to use female voices for assistive technologies. Apparently we respond better to them, imagining them as ‘women’ and helpfully projecting all our conscious and subconscious biases on to them. Apple’s Siri is named after the Norse for “a beautiful woman who leads you to victory”, while Microsoft’s rival system, Cortana, takes ‘her’ name from a super-hot virtual lady in Halo who walks around in simulated body paint.

This could soon become a problem. What does it mean for the perception and treatment of real women if male-dominated tech companies surround us with subservient female voices? If you think that’s a silly question, imagine if instead of vending machines we had robotic black people obediently handing over cans of Coke to us.

10 Responses

  2. “This could soon become a problem. What does it mean for the perception and treatment of real women if male-dominated tech companies surround us with subservient female voices?”

    -Nothing.

    “If you think that’s a silly question, imagine if instead of vending machines we had robotic black people obediently handing over cans of Coke to us.”

    -This would provide good role models for most Black people. And funny.