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Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

The article literally says, verbatim "...Date Your Digital Assistant." However, the only mention of a "boyfriend' is referring to Siri's deflection of such questions in a stereotypically Siri-esque manner. Even the current (now former) title, "Meet the $2,700 A.I. Girlfriend" suggests that A.I's are generally women.

- Cortana

- Alexa

- Siri

- Google Assistant

With the majority of the major players giving their intelligent assistants names that are most likely going to be associated with a woman, is it any surprise?

The real question is -- why are A.I. assistants conflated with women? I think you know the answer. In any case, this trend in "digital assistants" being named after women is no surprise, but disturbing nonetheless.

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This got me thinking about what a genderless voice would sound like.

I can see some parallels between that question and print vs hand writing[0]. Print is genderless, but not by design. A computer can produce more sounds more precisely than a human, could we invent a way of converting text to sound that could take advantage of that in some way?

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8961315 https://dabamirror.sci-hub.cc/ba3402de799822a492cbb9f42a2fe3... 78% accuracy in sexing hand writing from a single word.

Out of the five places I've worked, four had female assistants. I've interviewed at many more places with female secretaries.

Rather than "Why are assistants conflated with women?" a more interesting question is "Why do assistants tend to be women?" (If my experience is average.)

I don't really know the answer, but I hope it's not a controversial question, since I'm genuinely curious about the forces involved.

A mix of (1) women are more aesthetically pleasing, (2) women are socialized to fill the supporting role, and (3) systems are generally resistant to change, even over centuries.

I don't think any of those observations are very controversial.

You're concerned about controversy, because the origin is clearly sexist. Men running businesses wanted attractive women welcoming visitors (ie. other men) and helping them with tasks around the office.

The continuing problem is this hasn't changed much at all in the last half century. For example, you will not find one unattractive receptionist at any VC office on Sand Hill Rd.

> I understand that beauty is subjective

It's not, really: displays of health, wealth, leisure are pretty much common. Youth and fertility for women. Status and wealth for men. Body symmetry.

My layperson's understanding is that some of the specifics can be contextual to a particular time and culture, but the principles are universal, and so are a good number of the specifics.

I edited that line out, because it was superfluous. It's clear why these individuals were hired, in addition to being great at their job.

> "Why do assistants tend to be women?"

Lots of reasons, but a major one is that until relatively recently that's one of the jobs they were permitted to have: http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic.... In the legal world, for example, law firms openly rejected top applicants solely because they were women well into the 1970s.

People tend to think of that time as ancient history, but it's not. C and UNIX were developed in the late 1960s and are still the bedrock of the Internet. Why should we expect social phenomena would move faster than computing technologies?

There was a Mad Men scene (S5E01 I think) where the firm advertises that they're equal opportunity, and when a bunch of black applicants queue up, the hiring manager says to them (paraphrasing), "Yes, you heard right, we're equal opportunity and do hire blacks. But our only openings are for secretaries, so the men can leave."

That is, he's progressive enough to hire non-whites, but still doesn't think men can be secretaries. (In fairness, they probably wouldn't have wanted the role anyway.)

There is some science behind this. Studies have shown that people, both men and women, react differently to a female voice. Sometimes that reaction can make a real difference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx7-yvXf6f8

I was writing voice assist for star citizen(3rd party), I made sure I had both male and female. It bugs me that a)you can't call these 'assistants' by different names and b) they are always female.

Btw male here, but seriously, it's 2017, can we get a little customisability in this area?

A good reason for digital assistants being women is that a lot of people find feminine voices soothing. I personally find male voices to be more relaxing.

"The real question is -- why are A.I. assistants conflated with women? I think you know the answer."

Whats the answer?

The creators prefer a woman's voice? Sexism? Variance?

Sexism: Siri's secretary-like, menial role is still marketed with a woman's voice.

An observation, not a disagreement:

While P.A.s are stereotypically female in culture (e.g. Most often in films, novels, TV shows). 'High-value' assistants in several cultural contexts are usually portrayed as male: maitre d's, butlers, concierges.

Cultural expectations in the real world.

Wired:why are voice interfaces female

https://www.wired.com/2015/10/why-siri-cortana-voice-interfa...

Thanks for the link! I probably should have just googled it.

Here are the two studies that are quoted by most of the articles on this topic.

The first is Does social desirability bias favor humans? Explicit–implicit evaluations of synthesized speech support a new HCI model of impression management[0]. This study found that both men and women interpret female voices as warmer.

The second is Are Computers Gender-Neutral? Gender Stereotypic Responses to Computers[1]. This study found that male voices are preferred when discussing computers and female voices are preferred when discussing relationships.

[0] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.669...

[1] http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.536...

The warning voice in the B-58 hustler was made female because studies found fighter pilots pay more attention to female voices under stressful situations. There is an obvious "lol" reason for this, but the reality might just be the human ear can hear female pitched voices better when there are distracting noises. Deep voices are often difficult to hear.

A related issue is the voice used in aircraft warning systems. Different aircraft use a male voice (Boeing, Airbus) or female voice (McDonnell Douglas). There's various contradictory research on whether a male or female voice is better. For a long discussion, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitching_Betty

> The real question is -- why are A.I. assistants conflated with women?

Because men and women both respond better to women. This is true of interactions with people, it's true of disembodied voices that they know are backed by computer programs, it's true of images on magazine covers, it's true, well, basically everywhere.

It seems to me that a majority of AIs across a wide variety of fiction are female. Including quite powerful ones.

Leave Shodan and Glados alone!

I have a vague memory that some UK regional accents are considered to be more trustworthy, and are used in call-centers. I wonder if there's are related effects for female voices.

The default UK Siri voice is male. Considering that no one is alleging that the UK is less sexist or less interested in voices being pleasant, this is a good sanity check for any explanation on the gender of voices.

For the voice my personal experience is that it sounded the best to me. I used Ivona's, now AWS Poly, Amy UK voice. It sounds great as close to a real person as I could get at the time.

J.A.R.V.I.S (re-imagined as AI for Iron Man movies) is the only one I can think of, and Alfred App for OSX in a similar role (no voice, but name of digital "assistant").

> J.A.R.V.I.S (re-imagined as AI for Iron Man movies)

Apologies for the ignorance, but what was he in the comics?

He was an actual butler.

Because calling your assistant jeeves means you are the wooster drone.

On a serious note - a female voice is extremely pleasing. Male voice puts you instantly into play social status games mode.

    > Male voice puts you instantly into
    > play social status games mode

I suspect that's just one facet of adult males representing a lot more danger than adult females.

You can change Siri to be a man's voice in the U.S., as I did.

My understanding is that Siri was intentionally chosen to be a gender agnostic name.

Have you ever met a male person who was named Siri? I've not, but I've met multiple female people by that name.

I've never met anyone named Siri, but I did some brief research and it seems my belief was mistaken.

Women are by "default" considered more trustworthy and less dangerous than men.

The perfect qualities for an assistant role.

Unless you somehow think that's sexist, that's your real answer.

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