Transcript
Mastodon posts by @trenchworms@eldritch.cafe:
super revealing of the misogyny inherent to the space that "AI assistants" stopped being given feminine-coded names the moment tech chuds thought they were developing higher levels of autonomy
"i TELL Alexa what to do. i COLLABROATE with Chudbot. i will not reflect on this hierarchy at all."
Is it blatant? This feels like they're picking evidence to support the conclusion they already came to
Who has expressed the opinion in that quote they made up?
Siri, Bixby, Majel (Google Assistant), Cortana, Alexa… they are all female names and all had female voices at the beginning. I would say it’s blatant and it has been an ongoing topic of discussion as well.
Tbf, Cortana stems from a fictional AI that has far higher levels of autonomy. I don't think it was chosen with "let's find a good name for a limited AI interface" in mind.
It's interesting you cite that article, because it was written in 2018 and presented feminist arguments that we should stop making AI assistants female-coded. Now that the industry has done that exact thing, it's being criticized for it? It looks a lot of a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Bixby is definitely more masculine than feminine. Samsung actually renamed it to Sam (and gave it a feminine avatar) when they made it smarter. Google Assistant was only called Majel internally and very briefly, as a reference to the voice of the Star Trek computer. Externally, it was always Google Assistant until it was replaced with Gemini. Alexa is still Alexa. Siri is still Siri. Cortana was replaced by Copilot. By my count, that's one masc -> fem, one fem -> neutral, one neutral -> neutral, and two unchanged.
I’m torn on this because there definitely is a worrying increase in bigotry and tech bro culture, but at the same time OP’s “it’s so blatant once you notice it” could just as easily be “it’s so blatant once you’ve adopted confirmation bias enough to handwave away the exceptions”.
... This is not a made-up thought experiment though? We do have empirical data? Out of the five (5) companies mentioned in this thread, one (1) does not fit the pattern outlined in the OP. Seems pretty clear that something is going on. Unless you can point to some kind of sampling bias (by finding additional counterexamples), I don't see how you can just chalk it up to confirmation bias.
Sure, it could all be coincidence, in the same way that maybe the dog really did eat my homework. Not a very convincing explanation.
Interestingly I never see this kilometric leeway given to tech companies when discussing, say, their technically unproven surveillance practices, which pretty much everyone readily accept as fact.
That so many people are fighting this particular point is inherently curious. For "some reason" accusations of misogyny require a much higher burden of proof than many other kinds of accusations, which is really more a reflection on the people debating this than on the tech companies themselves (which we already know are run by complete and utter human shitstains anyway).
If I toss a coin 5 times and get 1H 4T, there's not a journal on the planet that would accept that as proof that it was a loaded coin, not to mention that the 5 on the list were specifically selected to prove a point (or were Clippy, Microsoft Bob, and Google Now girls as well?); and even if we did accept it as a rule (even though it isn't) it still doesn't follow that there was misogynist intent driving it; that's something you decided for yourselves.
I'd throw that right back at you. People arguing in its support seem a lot more likely to look for secret misogynist motives in the person they're talking to in order to support their argument by ad hominem. It suggests an "our team versus their team" attitude where being on the correct team is more important than being fair or accurate.
The evidence is obviously if you decide on the conclusion before looking for it
Point of order: Sam is gender neutral (we had a GirlSam and BoySam in our drama group in college, and GirlSam was there first (also won in the rock paper scissors to see who kept the name) so BoySam was BoySam and GirlSam was Sam unless we needed to be really specific in conversations)
Samsung's Sam is not gender-neutral, however.
ah, that's on them then
Even if we accept your premise, and I am not sure I do, you are still ignoring that they all had female avatars to begin with. So none of them started masc or neutral even if you think the name was.
You and OP need to start doing at least a TINY bit of research before you make these claims because they're verifiably wrong lol
It's wild that you're the most upvoted person in this thread when what you're saying just isn't true
Bixby's only visual representation was a lowercase "b" in negative space on blue leaf/teardrop shape. S Voice was a microphone. It's never had a humanoid avatar.
Siri's was a handwritten "Siri" with a green circle for the dot on the "I"; after Apple bought it, it was a microphone and then an abstract blue/purple design. It's never had a humanoid avatar.
Google Now wasn't stand-alone and didn't have any particular design - the button was a microphone in the Google palette. Google Assistant got an abstract set of circles in the Google palette. It's never had a humanoid avatar.
So I guess we're just talking about Cortana, unless I've missed any notable ones?
(Edit: Alexa didn't have an avatar; the logo was a lowercase "alexa" in the Amazon style with the smirking Amazon arrow. Evi had a plain circle with a dot and an arc, like a cyclopean emoji. Ivona was a headless service.)
Which of them had avatars at all except Cortana (before) and Sam (after)?
Wasn't Google Assistant named Iris at one point? Or was Iris a different thing that was announced, rolled out, and then canceled like basically everything else they've ever done?
That has nothing to do with what the post is saying, though. The claim is that techbros stopped using female names because they thought their AI could become sentient. And they're using the "Voice assistants had female names" thing as "evidence"
Also, how many women named Bixby do you know of?
Same as the number of men: zero.
Doesn't sound like a gendered name to me then
Agreed.
Also people absolutely tell ChatGPT and Grok and whatever what to do