Even virtual assistants are sexually harassed | Hacker News Reader

Even virtual assistants are sexually harassed

money.cnn.com

10 pointsempressplay8 comments

A friend of mine tested this behavior on Cortana shortly after installing Windows 10.

Based on how clever and varied the responses were, all I could figure was that people at Microsoft had spent a lot of time crafting specific responses to all manner of filthy queries.

>Harrison is one of eight writers who creates Cortana's dialogue in the U.S. In addition to writing jokes and coming up with casual banter, her team has to figure out the best way to shut down vulgar conversations.

Mystery solved. I have to admit, eight people sitting in a corporate office discussing the fine details of how their virtual robot responds to suggestive questions is kind of sad, and yet really bizarre.

What a time to be alive.

This is the very definition of a non-issue. Yes, people ask weird questions to virtual assistants, but that's because they are virtual. It's literally victimless, just like shooting someone in a FPS hurts no one.

You obviously have not read the article:

>One smart way to learn how to handle harassment is to talk to real assistants, which Microsoft did for Cortana. After all, they've been putting up with similar behavior for years.

It's still not harassment. It's a computer program.

My experiences were people who deliberately tried to ask the weirdest stuff (not only sexual, even mostly not) on the first day they had access to Siri or Cortana - not because it's victimless, because it's curiosity, i.e. "How was this program primed with answers regarding topic x?"

As another comment points out, this could be a case of "well, she's just a program. No harm, no foul."

However, I am male, so all of my opinions here are immediately moot; obviously I am merely trying to create a world where I won't be prosecuted for whatever vile crime I will inevitably commit.

Fight strawmen wjth strawmen, I guess. (Or is "strawmen" sexist?)

More than a decade ago, a friend wrote a sexual chat bot disguised as a real woman to sell hosting and other stuff. Many people were really engaged with her. It seems the Turing test doesn't matter in this context.

An article about the author was written in 2008 in Spanish. This is the Google Translate link: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

> " Robin Labs, which makes a voice-assistant for drivers, thinks there might be a market customizing personalities."

Shades of Genuine People Personalities http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Genuine_People_Personaliti...

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