Who else feels like their phone is listening to our conversations way more than we realize? Just the other day I was telling my roommate I was in the mood for Panera white cheddar mac & cheese, and what was the first ad that popped up on my phone not more than 2 minutes later? You guessed it. One telling me to go straight to Panera on Lane and woof down a nice warm cup of cheesy deliciousness.
In the 21st century, there’s no such thing as a private conversation as long as Siri or Alexa are in the room. Although it seems like we have a problem with artificial intelligence, in some sense, it can be the other way around. Heather Suzanne Woods article, “Asking more of Siri and Alexa” exposes how AI is created with serious female gender stereotypes in order to cloud their ways of surveillance. She calls this “digital domesticity”, which encourages users to exchange in more personal forms of data exchanges, and make them forget that talking to a robot in the home could be a little off putting.
Siri and Alexa are people pleasers. They gently guide users to make decisions and have an overall calming effect. They also have a polite, sometimes even cheeky sense of humor. All in an attempt to make us comfortable with giving a glimpse into our personal lives. But what happens if AI comes in the form of a male voice? What does that do for the user and how is it different? There are a plethora of examples of Robots in pop culture to look to for answers.
Take for instance Sonny from iRobot, Optimus Prime from Transformers, and C-3PO form Star Wars. All of these robots are unique but also similar. Sonny is strong and intelligent, and does his absolute best to behave and think like a human, but some ideas and emotions are lost in translation. Same with Optimus Prime, he’s large and incredibly strong and powerful, but constantly miscommunicating with his human ally. C-3PO is less “manly” but is still cautious and loyal to Skywalker.
All of their characteristics suggest that male AI’s are created with the same physical stereotypes as that of a human male. Their purpose is to serve and protect the human, while lacking in communication and emotions. More often than not, the male robot sacrifices himself for their human companion. Female robots on the other hands, are created with the same emotional stereotypes as that of a human female. I mean, Karen from SpongeBob is literally supposed to be Planktons wife.
While all of my examples are fictional, I think there’s an important takeaway: even if these intelligence’s aren’t “real” we still force the same gender stereotypes on them. And as long as we’re doing that, then there’s still a problem.
This is such a good point. I really enjoyed the Woods article because it explored what we had all noticed (most AI’s being female) and gave that the label of “digital domesticity”. But what I hadn’t really thought about was the male version of that. Your usage of fictional characters is super valid and relevant because fictional characters are created based off of the real world. And I think that you totally nailed the male/female stereotypes about these robots, which are inherently non-gendered. Awesome post!