Most virtual assistants are women

Women’s warmth and sensitivity are the factors that cause female AI to appear more often than men.
Nowadays, we can see that AI robots like Sophia, Erika or virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa all share a common feature of female sex.

According to the article by author Sylvie Borau, posted above The Conversation, Gender imbalances in the AI ​​world are a widespread trend. The status of female robots more than male robots could have detrimental consequences for women in the future. So why do female AIs appear more than male AIs? Direction to more humane robots AI experts prioritize female sex when programming robots because there are factors in women that are more important than men. Specifically, women have more warmth and ability to experience emotions than men due to their sensitivity. For AI, emotional experience is the elements they can emulate humans. To research on this issue, Borau created evolutionary scales and surveyed more than 3,000 people to see personality such as warm, cheerful, friendly, orderly, polite … whichever more. Not only suitable for the current social context, female robots are also considered to be easier to learn emotionally than male robots. Photo: Wonderland Magazine. Based on research theory, women possess the extreme human qualities more than men. Therefore, female robots are also more “human” than male robots. The way female AI deduces also opens up favorable directions for AI problems. In general, the research results show that female robots are endowed with qualities appropriate to the current service context of society. We tend to trust a female robot more. According to the The Conversation, Programming experts consider women the right group to develop AI because they realize that this gender possesses the qualities of a superman. Risk of increasing gender inequality In the view of writer Kate Manne, the quality of women can overcome the invisible gender barrier. The fact that women make up the majority of AI also stems from the perception that women are more “human” than men. However, UNESCO warns that gender imbalances in the AI ​​world can create prejudices against women, for example that some will view women as obedient groups. In the future, if the number of female robots explodes, materialized prejudices may emerge. Photo: GeekWire. Sylvie Borau thinks the process of turning women into AI development agents can have many consequences. Accordingly, in the future, when too many female AIs with high authenticity appear, women’s perspectives are tools designed to meet the needs of the owner, which will implicitly form in society. This could potentially result in more disregard for and loss of human rights among more women. Researcher Borau calls this human materialization. In social philosophy, materialization ( Objectification ) is the treatment of a human being (sometimes an animal) like an object. Therefore, Sylvie Borau’s research also emphasizes the ethical issue that AI designers must pay attention to. Seeing women as the key target for AI development doesn’t deliver good results for an egalitarian robot world. According to Sylvie Borau, we need to take measures to prevent women from falling into such prejudices. For example a solution similar to Google. The company stipulates that its AIs will be assigned a random male / female voice with equal probability.