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

Slashdot

[qbast]

Slashdot - news for whiny SJWs, stuff to get outraged about.

Re:*TRIGGERED*

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a question for said feminists:

The tech industry is supposedly composed of tech-bro sexist pigs who won't hire women, yes?

Yet oddly the tech industry tends to hire a lot of lesbians and M-F transgenders.

If you're a sexist rich dude why would you miss out on the educated and aesthetically pleasing Asian/Russian/Indian girls and instead hire politically stroppy dudes in dresses or ladies who have zero physical interest in you?

Re:More stats!

[AmiMoJo]

I sprayed weed killer in my garden and one or two weeds survived. By your logic that means there are no barriers to weeds in my garden and the poison I sprayed on it is 0% effective.

Re:*TRIGGERED*

[AmiMoJo]

Mea culpa, I should have said the ratio of men to women in CS, not in university in general. The rest of my point stands.

It's interesting that your response is basically to call me an "SJW" (see my sig for what I think of that) and then pick up on what seems like an obvious mistake. Oh, and then back to the SJW ad-hominem. Nice.

Re:*TRIGGERED*

[AmiMoJo]

It's interesting that you describe someone who is not me. For example, I would happily accept STEM being 90% male if there was evidence that all involved made a free choice, but there is actually a lot of evidence to the contrary.

I'm trying to make a reasoned argument, but you make absolute statements without even bothering with the argument part to justify your reasoning. For example, you suggest that not being blind to skin colour is racist, but I'd argue the opposite. Ignoring skin colour, ignoring the very real issues that are associated with it, is denying the struggles some people face.

Unfortunately this kind of nuanced argument is lost in the storm of rageposts. When I've made this argument in the past people get shitty on the assumption I'm calling them racist. I'm not, I'm saying that ignoring race is not always as helpful as you might think. Meritocracy and freedom of choice are noble goals, but we are a long way from being there yet.

I don't know where the rage comes from exactly. Could be a misunderstanding or a Pavlovian response conditioned by reading too much Reddit. I'm going to assume it's not bigotry. But it's always based on bold statements of dubious facts, like "girls just aren't interested" or "black people simply have a lower IQ". Excuse me if those are not the basis of your argument, but you didn't make one and those are the most common ones I see here.