Conversing with personal digital assistants: on gender and artificial intelligence

Main Article Content

Pedro Costa
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8382-2370

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the relationship between gender and artificial intelligence, seeking to understand how and why chatbots and digital assistants appear to be mostly female. To this end, it begins by addressing artificial intelligence and the questions that emerge with its evolution and integration in our daily lives. It then approaches the concept of gender in light of a binary framework, focusing on femininity. These topics are then related, in order to shed some light on how chatbots and digital assistants tend to display feminine attributes. In an attempt to observe these aspects, an analysis of Alexa, Cortana and Siri is developed, focusing on their anthropomorphization, the tasks they perform and their interactions. Complementing this discussion, the project Conversations with ELIZA is presented as an exploration of femininity in AI, through the development of four chatbots integrated into a web-based platform, each performing specific tasks and simulating particular personalities, with the purpose of emphasizing feminine roles and stereotypes. In this manner, this study aims to understand and explore how gender relates to AI, why femininity seems to be often present in AI and which gender roles or stereotypes are reinforced in this process.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Chatbots, Anthropomorphization, Gender, Femininity, Stereotypes

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Anders, C. J. (2015). From Metropolis to Ex Machina: Why Are So Many Robots Female? Gizmodo.

Butler, J. (1988). Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory. Theatre Journal, 40(4), 519-531. https://doi.org/10.2307/3207893

Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York and London: Routledge Classics.

Dale, R. (2016). Industry Watch: The return of the chatbots. Natural Language Engineering, 22(5), 811-817. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1351324916000243

Deaux, K., & Major, B. (1987). Putting Gender Into Context: An Interactive Model of Gender-Related Behavior. Psychological Review, 94(3), 369-389. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.94.3.369

Fessler, L. (2017). Siri, Define Patriarchy: We tested bots like Siri and Alexa to see who would stand up to sexual harassment. Quartz.

Halberstam, J. (1991). Automating Gender: Postmodern Feminism in the Age of the Intelligent Machine. Feminist Studies, 17(3), 439-460. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178281

Haraway, D. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books.

Hester, H. (2016). Technology Becomes Her. New Vistas, 3(1), 46-50.

Hofstadter, D. (1995). The Ineradicable Eliza Effect and Its Dangers Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought (pp. 155-168). New York: Basic Books.

Morozov, E. (2013a). The Perils of Perfection. The New York Times.

Morozov, E. (2013b). To Save Everything, click here: the Folly of Technological Solutionism. New York: Public Affairs.

Piccini, G. (2004). Functionalism, computationalism, and mental states. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 35, 811-833. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2004.02.003

Prentice, D. A., & Carranza, E. (2002). What Women and Men Should Be, Shouldn't Be, Are Allowed to Be, and Don't Have to Be: The Contents of Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 269-281. https://doi.org/10.1111/1471-6402.t01-1-00066

Richardson, K. (2015). Introduction: Annihilation Anxiety and Machines. An Anthropology of Robots and AI. New York and London: Routledge.

Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (2010). Natural Language Processing. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

Snyder, M. (1977). On the Self-Fulfilling Nature of Social Stereotypes. Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, California.

Weber, J. (2005). Helpless machines and true loving care givers: a feminist critique of recent trends in human-robot interaction. Info, Comm & Ethics in Society, 3, 309-218. https://doi.org/10.1108/14779960580000274

Weizenbaum, J. (1966). ELIZA - A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man And Machine. Computational Linguistics, 9(1), 36-45.

Weizenbaum, J. (1976). Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. New York/San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company.

West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing Gender. Gender and Society, 1(2), 125-151. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243287001002002

Zost, M. (2015). Phantom of the Operator: Negotiating Female Gender Identity in Telephonic Technology from Operator to Apple iOS. Senior Thesis, BA, Faculty of College of Arts and Science of Georgetown University.