Blouse Magazine

FEATURED
N,
BAGE OUT
million people, particularly men, on Chinese social networks. Xiaoice is
supposed to “banter” and gives dating advice to many lonely hearts.
Microsoft has come under fire recently for sexism, when they hired
women wearing very little clothing which was said to resemble ‘school
girl’ outfits at the company’s official game developer party, so they
probably want to avoid another sexism scandal.
Increasingly, AI helpers from Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana to
talking home thermostats, GPS and fitness apps default to a female
voice, as lots of research suggests that both male and female consumers
prefer it. The likely explanations of this are many and probably driven by
social conditioning; we want our virtual assistants to seem pliant and
non-threatening, competent but not domineering. Maybe AI development
is also influenced by the geek culture ideal of being alternately serviced
and encouraged by a hard-earned digital princess . The nostalgic science
fiction fantasies of white guys drive lots of things in Silicon Valley, so why
not the concept of AI?
bafflement, such late apology? Why did no one at Microsoft know right
from the start that this would happen, when all of us - female journalists,
activists, game developers and engineers who live online every day and
could have predicted it - are talking about it all the time?
The answer cannot be anything but outright disdain. The industry wants
to use women’s voices but still has no plans to actually listen to them.
If empathy is core to the future of artificial intelligence, worry not—
the Singularity is still quite a way off, no matter how many terrifying
Holocaust-denying, racist, anti-feminist white millennial-bots Microsoft
“accidentally” spawns.
Tay is, of course, yet another example of why we need more women in
technology — and of how the industry is failing to listen to those of us
who are already here. Despite lip service to “diversity,” those who push
for it in their workplace are actually likely to be penalized. There was
recently an entire summit at South by Southwest dedicated to finding
solutions for the abusive speech directed at women and people of color
online — isolated away from the main conference and reportedly attended
only by the few brave souls already aware of the issue. We’ve gotten
the clear message that women’s safety online is not a problem the tech
industry is solving; that maybe they don’t even believe it’s a problem.
How could anyone think that creating a young woman and inviting
strangers to interact with her on social media would make Tay
“smarter?” How can the story of Tay be met with such corporate
blouse.com/girltalk | 13