Tech Firms Have An Obsession With 'Female' Digital Servants (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Alexa, Tay, Siri, Cortana, Xiaoice, and Google Now. These technologies all have one thing in common -- they are digital servants aimed at a mass-market audience that feature a "female" voice or persona. And it's not just the voice or persona of the digital persona we interact with that is biased. The results of those interactions also demonstrate male favoritism. It took Apple more than four years to fix Siri's responses to questions about abortion services, and yet the company didn't seem to have any problem programming Siri to search for prostitutes and Viagra. Here's the gender breakdown for the tech workforce of each company:
Microsoft: 83.0% male, 16.9% female
Google: 82.0% male, 18.0% female
Apple: 79.0% male, 22.0% female
Amazon: 61.0% male, 39.0% female

Comments

*TRIGGERED*

[Sigvatr]

*TRIGGERED*

Re: *TRIGGERED*

[silentcoder]

Definitely the bass because if I see someone with a triangle I am punching him in the face before he can play that abomination.

Re: *TRIGGERED*

[johnsmithperson123]

There are more women than men at most universities but they seldom study anything useful (no offense). It's college for college's sake. If you want to get more women in 'STEM' you could start by killing Gender Studies.

Re: *TRIGGERED*

[Shortguy881]

I'm all for studying the other gender. The homework is great.

HAL

[Edis Krad]

Make it HAL's voice and I'll switch it right away. Specially if after searching for something it didn't find it, it said. I'm sorry (Your Name), I'm afraid I can't do that .

Re:Amazon

[Aighearach]

They are clearly higher women who are less qualified.

I think clearly you're even higher than they are.

Re:lies, damn lies and statistics.

[serviscope_minor]

Hey you can't do that, you're comparing apples to ora.. uh googles.

I thought the same

[MrKaos]

To alleviate the issue, I recorded the phrases for my wife's car navigator but I changed the 'left' and 'right' audio with the much more helpful 'it's coming up' and 'you just missed it'. I re-recorded the 5, with a 3 and the hundred with 'just there, fuck it's right in front of you' - That way I no longer have to assist her in person - the machine does that for me and it's like I'm in the car actually being helpful.

GPS imperative

[DrYak]

because if it were all male voices then the same fucking story would be posted but with a twist that women are stupid so you can't use the voice for an assistant.

Also note that most GPS speak by default using a female (higher pitch) voicepack, and are clearly giving order using imperative forms to the driver.

That's not exactly what I would call subservient.