
How a feminist approach to design is the key to tackling bias in AI - colinprince
https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/opinion-ai-bias-chatbots-feminist-internet-digital-130619
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charliesharding
I agree with a lot of points this article makes. I have never understood why
siri and google voice assistants have a feminine voice. It's good that they
want to take the "I" out of responses to highlight the fact that you are
talking to a robot.

However I don't understand how they can point to unequal representation of all
groups in a field and say that it's a problem. Assuming that all groups
require equal representation assumes that all groups are equally distributed
in a population and that all different kinds of people should have an equally
distributed interest in all fields. This is obviously not the case. I will
adamantly oppose any kind of legislation or policy that seeks to restrict any
individual based off of the "groups" that they belong to, whether that be
gender, race, religion, ice cream preference, etc. However to go further and
try to actively include people based off their group identity is fundamentally
guided by the same assumption that causes discrimination based off of groups.
It is reducing the individual to the intersection of the groups they belong to
and not regarding them as the free agent that they are.

"[statistics about how different "groups" of people aren't all equally
represented in all fields]. Clearly, something needs to be done about these
issues. We’re hardwired for bias"

Am I the only one who sees this statement as ironic? Their own bias is that
this is an issue - not a result of individuals making choices.

~~~
belorn
> I have never understood why siri and google voice assistants have a feminine
> voice.

Except that they don't. They both use feminine voice in the US market, but
Siri is male in many countries. Countries with British English, French, Dutch
and Arabic all have masculine voice as the default.

That siri and google voice assistants is a reflection on user studies. Apple
apparently did unique studies in all countries which they customized their
phone for and thus they use different defaults depending on where the phone is
sold.

