

Siri and Her Girls: Why So Many Robot Helpers Are Ladies - slaterhearst
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/10/siri-and-her-girls-why-so-many-robot-helpers-are-ladies/246661/

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freshhawk
> marketers have an easier time finding a universally

> likeable female voice than a male one

This article could have shorter, the rest of it seems to spend half the time
explaining why it's ok to discount conflicting evidence and the other half
throwing out conjecture on why the premise of sexism might possibly be
slightly accurate.

Is it really that weird that different cultures end up with different genders
for a friendly, non-judgemental, disembodied and slightly inhuman mechanical
voice? How weird would it be if there was no cultural preference? If the
preference was always 50.0/50.0? Now _that_ would be unlikely!

There are so many factors here, some of which are, no doubt, cultural
stereotypes about gender. Doesn't it seem more likely that the "friendly" and
"non-judgemental" part is the stereotype? Even if it's not, since the author
makes it clear this is an open question why are all the options twisted into
an anti-women stereotype?

> This dovetails with the way stereotypes

> work; our prejudices make us dislike hearing

> a man go about secretarial work

Are you fucking kidding me? That's a stretch for an explanation of why men and
women find the women's voice more likeable. Why not the much more likely
Loving Mother stereotype? Sure, it's all conjecture and that's fine, but the
author has clearly made up her mind that this is sexist and is trying to
figure out why. That seems backwards if you are interested in truth.

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fleitz
It's link bait, the only truth in link bait is page views.

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wccrawford
I like how he ignores that the British Siri is male... And even goes so far as
to admit he's doing so.

"That's women's work" doesn't really hold up for me. I have never once
thought, "I have a question. I'd better go find a woman to ask, because that's
women's work." I don't even think that "female" is a helpdesk stereotype. I
certainly don't have any expectations when I start looking for a help desk.

Now if he had said that people associate 'friendly' voices with women, and
'competitive' voices with men, that would fall along more typical stereotypes,
and I might believe that. Maybe.

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Jun8
Also ignored are the facts that some of the most memorable AI voices were
male, e.g. HAL and Knight Industries Two Thousand.

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SageRaven
Federation computers of the Star Trek universe, the Halo (Game) AI, the
Andromeda (TV series) AI, SAL (HAL's twin sister from 2010). Lots o' female
voices in the fictional AI space.

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sp332
Star Trek's computer voice was Gene Roddenberry's wife. That doesn't sound
like a demeaning sexist choice.

I'll give you the others though, especially Cortana from HALO
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cortana#Criti...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Cortana#Critical_reception)

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onemoreact
Ignores the #1 reason I use chose the female voice for most electronics. It
sounds better and is more clearly understood coming out of under powered
speakers at low volume.

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qq66
I remember hearing somewhere that the voice system in fighter planes is female
because if a man is at the edge of losing consciousness (as fighter pilots can
be during high-g maneuvers because of blood rushing away from their heads
towards their legs), the sound of a woman's voice is more likely to keep him
conscious.

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dquigley
That was my thought as well when I saw the headline. Also this article
explains briefly the history of it -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty>

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bitops
I've heard anecdotally that the reason computer voices and avatars tend to be
women is that people tend to respond better and believe the data more.

The story that was told to me (don't know if it's true, couldn't find a link)
was that they did testing on astronauts and they found that the male
astronauts tended to disagree more with a male voice. Whereas "the voice of
mother" was more likely to be found credible.

Again, I don't know if it's true, but it seemed to make sense to me at the
time.

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rauljara
At the very beginning of the article, the author claims robots (as opposed to
bodiless ai voices). She mentions Rosie as an exception, but I can think of a
whole bunch more. The terminator from T3, the sexy robots from Svedka's vodka
campaign, even the robot from 1927's metropolis. I think it is worth noting
that all of these robots (except for Rosie, of course) fall under the category
of sexy robot. But I also think this is pretty clearly a not well thought out
article. And I, myself, certainly wouldn't make the claim that all female
robots with bodies are sexy after spending all of 30 seconds brainstorming on
it... as opposed to the author of the article...

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ugh
Because VoiceOver (Apple’s screenreader) uses a female voice. At least if you
pick US English as your language. You will get a male voice if you pick
British English or French. (Siri uses the same voice as the screenreader.
There is only one per language, unlike on the Mac where you can pick from
different voices.)

What’s the underlying reason for Apple picking a female US English voice for
VoiceOver? They probably bought the voice that whoever worked on it liked best
and that also worked with the limited resources on the iOS devices.

The default voice for VoiceOver on the Mac is “Alex”, a male voice. It sounds
much better than the iPhone’s voice, probably because a Mac can throw much
more resources at voice synthesis. I bet the iPhone would use “Alex” as its US
English voice if it had the chops to do so.

All the rest is the author’s silly imagination. Go ahead and ask Siri what sex
it is.

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jff
I noticed this a few months ago, when I realized that my phone's Google
navigation, all the GPS devices I'd ever used, and most of the text-to-speech
I've heard in general, default to a female voice.

Why? I have no idea, but I doubt it's because we have this unconscious desire
to "keep women in their place". Could it be rather that men are less likely to
"argue" with a female voice than the perceived competition of a male voice?
And that some women, in turn, might not like being ordered around by a man's
voice while driving? Plus, as another poster mentioned, the higher register of
a typical female voice may stand out better against the noise of the road, the
engine, etc.

Of course, I could just be fooling myself--maybe subconsciously I just want to
keep female voices in these kind of "support" positions. Who knows.

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pohl
An article on this topic deserves one mention of Majel Barrett, doesn't it?

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seunghomattyang
Because we like girls more.

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rsanchez1
We being the male-dominated environment in which these robot helpers are
developed.

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d0mine
_Eagly’s research has compiled mountains of data on the stereotypes people
have about men and women, which the researchers summarized as “The WAW
effect.” WAW stands for “Women Are Wonderful.” Both men and women hold much
more favorable views of women than of men. Almost everybody likes women better
than men. I certainly do._ </quote>
<http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm>

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stereo
Bollocks. Higher voices are simply easier to hear over urban noise.

