8 ms·

What problem does this solve?

by Uhhrrr 8y ago

deleted_account 8y ago
"Technology companies often choose to gender technology believing it will make people more comfortable adopting it. Unfortunately this reinforces a binary perception of gender, and perpetuates stereotypes that many have fought hard to progress. As society continues to break down the gender binary, recognising those who neither identify as male nor female, the technology we create should follow. Q is an example of what we hope the future holds; a future of ideas, inclusion, positions and diverse representation in technology."
- maccio92 8y ago
  Ahh, so delusion
- monksy 8y ago
  > stereotypes that many have fought hard to progress What stereotypes would this help to alleviate? > the technology we create should follow. Why it's a service that communications via artificial audio. Why is it important that you can't have a male or a female voice? People still exist, the voices in question don't have a physical appearance.
  - jolmg 8y ago
    > What stereotypes would this help to alleviate? Though I don't feel strongly either way, my guess is that, since people usually leave software on defaults and female voices are typically chosen for voice assistants, the stereotype might be of women being servants.
    - diss 8y ago
      That seems to me like a far reaching problem to solve. I don't believe anyone actually thinks like that, I think this hypothetical issue exists in the minds of people trying to solve it.
      - jolmg 8y ago
        > I don't believe anyone actually thinks like that You'd be surprised. The world is vast and gender roles are traditional in many cultures.
        diss 8y ago
        It's one thing to subscribe to gender roles traditional to your culture, but a totally different thing to base your attitude towards women on the perceived gender of a virtual assistant on your phone. You can kind of make a logical link if you try, but I don't believe that's how it plays out in reality. It'll possibly be more relevant if/when these virtual assistants become indistinguishable from humans and perhaps have a physical form.
        jolmg 8y ago
        > but a totally different thing to base your attitude towards women on the perceived gender of a virtual assistant on your phone. Well, if you say "base", then yeah that's very unlikely. However, their attitude doesn't need to be based on that, it could simply be supported by it, even a little bit. If all your life you've seen women in a "serving" sort of role, like seeing only female nurses serving your medicine, female waitresses serving your food, female caretakers serving your kids and elders, female maids serving your house needs, and even your female-sounding phone serving your electronic needs, then in aggregate and in time that sets an idea, even a subconscious one, that contributes to your understanding of how the world works. I don't see this genderless voice as being the solution to a problem. I see it as them just trying to do their small part in a change they want to see.
      - claudiawerner 8y ago
        I'd say there's a big difference between someone consciously thinking in a certain way, and building associations, many of which they don't notice. In fact, it's been one of the principal aims of psychology, sociology and economics to uncover how people act on such opinions without knowing they actually hold them.
    - evilotto 8y ago
      "Female voices do however appear to have an advantage in that they can portray a greater range of urgencies because of their usually higher pitch and pitch range. An experiment is reported showing that knowledge about the sex of a speaker has no effect on judgements of perceived urgency, with acoustic variables accounting for such differences." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14965452 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14965452
- overgard 8y ago
  If technology is needed to create this kind of voice -- IE it's not really natural, and as others have suggested it creates an uncanny valley of voice that confuses people, wouldn't that actually perpetuate the idea that there is a gender binary? (I don't have a dog in this fight, I just don't see that this accomplishes what you want it to)
  - diss 8y ago
    Yes. You find contradictions all through this kind of belief system if you analyse it logically, because it's driven first and foremost by how people feel (or how people think others might feel).
    - cazum 8y ago
      The analysis of the social construction of gender is not derived from "feelings." This technology is actually quite inconsistent with gender studies, which is why I find it quite baffling. Gender as an identity would imply that a female could have a deep gravelly voice and that a man could also have a higher pitched softer voice, as ones gender identity need not be dictated by their born sex or physical attributes. This is quite fundamental to gender studies, making this tech not just useless, but completely counter intuitive to that project.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- jriot 8y ago
  Society still views gender as binary.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  This sounds incredibly sad and dystopian. And silly, too. Regardless of what is going on inside a person's head (which we can choose to respect, absolutely), biologically there is definitely just two genders. You can identify however you like, modify if you wish, but in the end your body will be one or the other, right along with your voice.
  - daeken 8y ago
    Gender is not a biological concept, period; that's sex. Your body is also distinctly not "one or the other", given that a large portion of the world is born with one of several intersex conditions.
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      I figured someone would try to bring up malfunctions. No, DNA is pretty clear on the whole male/female thing. Malfunctions are just that. Redefining gender is an uphill battle. I won't wish you good luck in doing that, I'd prefer coming up with a new term for this goal.
      - crummy 8y ago
        Is DNA pretty clear on the whole male/female thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
      - falcor84 8y ago
        There is no such thing as a malfunction in genetics - every single biological property is the result of some imperfect copy some time in the past.
    - diss 8y ago
      > a large portion of the world is born with one of several intersex conditions No, a very very small portion. Gender doesn't vary independently from sex, you'd be hard pressed to find a stronger correlation. It's misleading to consider them as totally separate things.
- RivieraKid 8y ago
  > As society continues to break down the gender binary, recognising those who neither identify as male nor female, the technology we create should follow. People who neither identify as male nor female AND want to listen to a gender-neutral voice seems like a very niche market.
- john_moscow 8y ago
  Am I the only person who thinks that the text above is some elaborate kind of trolling?
- carnagii 8y ago
  it is an interesting idea. technology of course has no gender, and any synthesized speech can only express an arbitrary simulation of gender, so making this explicit reveals the underlying reality that all technological simulations of gender are by definition constructed. a piece of art that demonstrates the construction of gender probably will not catch on well as a product though.
- burfog 8y ago
  I instantly recognized the voice as M2F, before it even confirmed that by the description of how it was created. If I had a device with this voice, I would feel a strong urge to reenact the final printer scene from the movie Office Space. Companies want their voice-enabled products to be purchased. Revulsion doesn't help.
weberc2 8y ago
Best attempt at a judgement-free guess: some people don't like the bimodal manifestation of gender and would like to not be reminded of it.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Uhhrrr 8y ago
  Is there any market signal that this is the case?
- maccio92 8y ago
  Maybe we should try to figure out why our society is producing people with this rejection of basic biology rather than ignore the problem
- matz1 8y ago
  The number of people in this category would be small right? Why should I spend time to worry about it?
  - xienze 8y ago
    Uh oh, wrongthink detected.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe the people who do care about it can go about creating solutions to their real or perceived problem(s), and maybe the can be okay. It seems possible, from my perspective, there is enough motivation to go around to work on multiple issues at once. While climate change, over-fishing, land degradation, certainly could do with more attention, gender issues represent a fairly immediate threat for some people in some places at some times.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      Complaints about priorities are a fallacy more often than not, especially since we're talking about different actors - it's not like the people who did this would have been working on climate change otherwise. But if we were playing the priority game, I'd say that the gender issues that represent immediate threats are stuff like domestic violence and sexual assault. It's reasonable to argue that reducing overall gender bias affects those, but it's a very subtle and long-term effect - and likely beyond the AGW event horizon. It's not going to do anything about the immediate threat.
contingencies 8y ago
The page asserts that audio content to many listeners is firstly "defined" (though perhaps "subconsciously emotionally engaged with to some extent" would be more accurate) by perceived gender, before semantics. The notion is that by adding a genderless/neutral voice, this would be removed. Of course, you then need to discard genders in names as well, hence 'Q'. It's pretty forward thinking... I don't doubt assistant tech may go this way. However, wouldn't "dehumanization by association" for non gender identifying individuals be a risk if that popularizes? A nice thought-provoking art project, if nothing else.
PaulHoule 8y ago
I find it artistically interesting. A computer assistant doesn't have a gender so why should it represent itself as male or female? I find something offputting that so many agents pick a female voice (e.g. Alexa, Siri)
- ihuman 8y ago
  > A computer assistant doesn't have a gender so why should it represent itself as male or female A human has to be in the recording booth to create the vocal library. Also you can change the Siri voice to not only be Male, but also have a different accent.
  - uryga 8y ago
    > A human has to be in the recording booth to create the vocal library. do they? i mean, we're not great at synthesizing natural-sounding voices yet, but that's a technical challenge – not something inherent to the problem.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      What would make it "natural-sounding", though? What if that happens to include gender stereotypes? I don't think it's possible to assert that it's purely a technical challenge before we understand the goal clearly, beyond "I'll know it when I hear it".
- RivieraKid 8y ago
  > A computer assistant doesn't have a gender so why should it represent itself as male or female? One could argue that a computer assistant should have a human-like voice and an overwhelming majority of humans have distinctly male or female voices.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I find something offputting that so many agents pick a female voice (e.g. Alexa, Siri) Its research based, not merely "sexism": https://www.cnn.com/2011/10/21/tech/innovation/female-computer-voices/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2011/10/21/tech/innovation/female-comput...

What problem does this solve?

by Uhhrrr 8y ago

What problem does this solve?

"Technology companies often choose to gender technology believing it will make people more comfortable adopting it. Unfortunately this reinforces a binary perception of gender, and perpetuates stereotypes that many have fought hard to progress. As society continues to break down the gender binary, recognising those who neither identify as male nor female, the technology we create should follow. Q is an example of what we hope the future holds; a future of ideas, inclusion, positions and diverse representation in technology."

maccio92 8y ago
Ahh, so delusion
monksy 8y ago
> stereotypes that many have fought hard to progress What stereotypes would this help to alleviate? > the technology we create should follow. Why it's a service that communications via artificial audio. Why is it important that you can't have a male or a female voice? People still exist, the voices in question don't have a physical appearance.
- jolmg 8y ago
  > What stereotypes would this help to alleviate? Though I don't feel strongly either way, my guess is that, since people usually leave software on defaults and female voices are typically chosen for voice assistants, the stereotype might be of women being servants.
  - diss 8y ago
    That seems to me like a far reaching problem to solve. I don't believe anyone actually thinks like that, I think this hypothetical issue exists in the minds of people trying to solve it.
    - jolmg 8y ago
      > I don't believe anyone actually thinks like that You'd be surprised. The world is vast and gender roles are traditional in many cultures.
      - diss 8y ago
        It's one thing to subscribe to gender roles traditional to your culture, but a totally different thing to base your attitude towards women on the perceived gender of a virtual assistant on your phone. You can kind of make a logical link if you try, but I don't believe that's how it plays out in reality. It'll possibly be more relevant if/when these virtual assistants become indistinguishable from humans and perhaps have a physical form.
        jolmg 8y ago
        > but a totally different thing to base your attitude towards women on the perceived gender of a virtual assistant on your phone. Well, if you say "base", then yeah that's very unlikely. However, their attitude doesn't need to be based on that, it could simply be supported by it, even a little bit. If all your life you've seen women in a "serving" sort of role, like seeing only female nurses serving your medicine, female waitresses serving your food, female caretakers serving your kids and elders, female maids serving your house needs, and even your female-sounding phone serving your electronic needs, then in aggregate and in time that sets an idea, even a subconscious one, that contributes to your understanding of how the world works. I don't see this genderless voice as being the solution to a problem. I see it as them just trying to do their small part in a change they want to see.
    - claudiawerner 8y ago
      I'd say there's a big difference between someone consciously thinking in a certain way, and building associations, many of which they don't notice. In fact, it's been one of the principal aims of psychology, sociology and economics to uncover how people act on such opinions without knowing they actually hold them.
  - evilotto 8y ago
    "Female voices do however appear to have an advantage in that they can portray a greater range of urgencies because of their usually higher pitch and pitch range. An experiment is reported showing that knowledge about the sex of a speaker has no effect on judgements of perceived urgency, with acoustic variables accounting for such differences." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14965452 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14965452
overgard 8y ago
If technology is needed to create this kind of voice -- IE it's not really natural, and as others have suggested it creates an uncanny valley of voice that confuses people, wouldn't that actually perpetuate the idea that there is a gender binary? (I don't have a dog in this fight, I just don't see that this accomplishes what you want it to)
- diss 8y ago
  Yes. You find contradictions all through this kind of belief system if you analyse it logically, because it's driven first and foremost by how people feel (or how people think others might feel).
  - cazum 8y ago
    The analysis of the social construction of gender is not derived from "feelings." This technology is actually quite inconsistent with gender studies, which is why I find it quite baffling. Gender as an identity would imply that a female could have a deep gravelly voice and that a man could also have a higher pitched softer voice, as ones gender identity need not be dictated by their born sex or physical attributes. This is quite fundamental to gender studies, making this tech not just useless, but completely counter intuitive to that project.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
jriot 8y ago
Society still views gender as binary.
rootusrootus 8y ago
This sounds incredibly sad and dystopian. And silly, too. Regardless of what is going on inside a person's head (which we can choose to respect, absolutely), biologically there is definitely just two genders. You can identify however you like, modify if you wish, but in the end your body will be one or the other, right along with your voice.
- daeken 8y ago
  Gender is not a biological concept, period; that's sex. Your body is also distinctly not "one or the other", given that a large portion of the world is born with one of several intersex conditions.
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    I figured someone would try to bring up malfunctions. No, DNA is pretty clear on the whole male/female thing. Malfunctions are just that. Redefining gender is an uphill battle. I won't wish you good luck in doing that, I'd prefer coming up with a new term for this goal.
    - crummy 8y ago
      Is DNA pretty clear on the whole male/female thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
    - falcor84 8y ago
      There is no such thing as a malfunction in genetics - every single biological property is the result of some imperfect copy some time in the past.
  - diss 8y ago
    > a large portion of the world is born with one of several intersex conditions No, a very very small portion. Gender doesn't vary independently from sex, you'd be hard pressed to find a stronger correlation. It's misleading to consider them as totally separate things.
RivieraKid 8y ago
> As society continues to break down the gender binary, recognising those who neither identify as male nor female, the technology we create should follow. People who neither identify as male nor female AND want to listen to a gender-neutral voice seems like a very niche market.
john_moscow 8y ago
Am I the only person who thinks that the text above is some elaborate kind of trolling?
carnagii 8y ago
it is an interesting idea. technology of course has no gender, and any synthesized speech can only express an arbitrary simulation of gender, so making this explicit reveals the underlying reality that all technological simulations of gender are by definition constructed. a piece of art that demonstrates the construction of gender probably will not catch on well as a product though.
burfog 8y ago
I instantly recognized the voice as M2F, before it even confirmed that by the description of how it was created. If I had a device with this voice, I would feel a strong urge to reenact the final printer scene from the movie Office Space. Companies want their voice-enabled products to be purchased. Revulsion doesn't help.

weberc2 8y ago

Best attempt at a judgement-free guess: some people don't like the bimodal manifestation of gender and would like to not be reminded of it.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Uhhrrr 8y ago
Is there any market signal that this is the case?
maccio92 8y ago
Maybe we should try to figure out why our society is producing people with this rejection of basic biology rather than ignore the problem
matz1 8y ago
The number of people in this category would be small right? Why should I spend time to worry about it?
- xienze 8y ago
  Uh oh, wrongthink detected.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe the people who do care about it can go about creating solutions to their real or perceived problem(s), and maybe the can be okay. It seems possible, from my perspective, there is enough motivation to go around to work on multiple issues at once. While climate change, over-fishing, land degradation, certainly could do with more attention, gender issues represent a fairly immediate threat for some people in some places at some times.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    Complaints about priorities are a fallacy more often than not, especially since we're talking about different actors - it's not like the people who did this would have been working on climate change otherwise. But if we were playing the priority game, I'd say that the gender issues that represent immediate threats are stuff like domestic violence and sexual assault. It's reasonable to argue that reducing overall gender bias affects those, but it's a very subtle and long-term effect - and likely beyond the AGW event horizon. It's not going to do anything about the immediate threat.

contingencies 8y ago

The page asserts that audio content to many listeners is firstly "defined" (though perhaps "subconsciously emotionally engaged with to some extent" would be more accurate) by perceived gender, before semantics. The notion is that by adding a genderless/neutral voice, this would be removed. Of course, you then need to discard genders in names as well, hence 'Q'. It's pretty forward thinking... I don't doubt assistant tech may go this way. However, wouldn't "dehumanization by association" for non gender identifying individuals be a risk if that popularizes? A nice thought-provoking art project, if nothing else.

PaulHoule 8y ago

I find it artistically interesting. A computer assistant doesn't have a gender so why should it represent itself as male or female? I find something offputting that so many agents pick a female voice (e.g. Alexa, Siri)

ihuman 8y ago
> A computer assistant doesn't have a gender so why should it represent itself as male or female A human has to be in the recording booth to create the vocal library. Also you can change the Siri voice to not only be Male, but also have a different accent.
- uryga 8y ago
  > A human has to be in the recording booth to create the vocal library. do they? i mean, we're not great at synthesizing natural-sounding voices yet, but that's a technical challenge – not something inherent to the problem.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    What would make it "natural-sounding", though? What if that happens to include gender stereotypes? I don't think it's possible to assert that it's purely a technical challenge before we understand the goal clearly, beyond "I'll know it when I hear it".
RivieraKid 8y ago
> A computer assistant doesn't have a gender so why should it represent itself as male or female? One could argue that a computer assistant should have a human-like voice and an overwhelming majority of humans have distinctly male or female voices.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
I find something offputting that so many agents pick a female voice (e.g. Alexa, Siri) Its research based, not merely "sexism": https://www.cnn.com/2011/10/21/tech/innovation/female-computer-voices/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2011/10/21/tech/innovation/female-comput...