According to several experts, this is no accident. These digital assistants are designed to be attentive, sometimes submissive, and sometimes even sexy. “It seems that people tend to accept, feel more comfortable and feel more positive or even happy when they hear a female voice, and that makes us more likely to accept the technology,” said Eleonore Fournier-Tombs, senior researcher at Macau’s. The United Nations University Institute told CBC Radio’s IDEAS. Today, you can choose a male or female voice for most digital assistants. In February, Apple released a new gender-neutral option, called Quinn. But in most marketing, women’s voices enjoy the spotlight. Microsoft’s Cortana, in particular, is named after a sentient AI character in the Halo video games. Cortana, a sentient artificial intelligence, appears in Halo 4 for the Microsoft Xbox 360 video game console. Microsoft named its digital assistant program after Cortana. (343 Industries/Microsoft) “This real-world device is literally modeled on a fictional robotic woman with lots of curves, tight clothing — and in the Halo 4 version, side breasts,” said Jennifer Jill Fellows, professor of philosophy at Douglas College in New. Westminster, BC But the trend didn’t suddenly emerge from the last decade or so of focus groups. They’re also built in a century that sees computers as women, experts note — and often, women as subservient helpers.
Pickering’s Harem
The word “calculator” has been in use since at least 1600. The 1755 edition of Samuel Johnson’s English Dictionary defines the word as “calculator or accountant.” In the late 19th century, women whose husbands had been killed in the US Civil War sought work to support themselves and their families. Many of these jobs involved office work, including typing, accounting — and IT. According to David Grier, a technology consultant in Washington, scientists at universities have begun hiring women as computers to process the flood of data from new, highly advanced telescopes. At the Harvard College Observatory, this initiative was taken by the astronomer and physicist Edward Pickering. During his time at Harvard, he recruited dozens of women to help his group’s work. Edward Pickering and a computer team he hired are seen in a 1913 photo in front of Harvard University College. The women were often known collectively as Pickering’s Harem. (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) The work was often low-paying, with little opportunity for advancement or respect. “Pickering boasted [that] … he was paying them as little as he could,” Grier said. Eventually, they became collectively known as Pickering’s Harem, perhaps due to the popularity of the Arabian Nights in England at the time – an association apparently encouraged by Pickering himself. “This was the era of Orientalism, a fanciful idea of the exotic East, where powerful men had a harem of sexually submissive concubines,” Fellows explained. “A bit much for a university professor and his assistants.”
Talk like a lady
While men like Pickering helped perpetuate computing as a job for women that looked like secretaries or assistants, others were thinking about how to make computer engineering more appealing to the masses. Andrea Guzman is an associate professor at Northern Illinois University who researches human-machine communications. (Andrea Guzman) In the 1950s, this included trying to reduce fears that automation threatened to make jobs – from manufacturing to office work – obsolete. “[It raised] this question what would happen to the workers? And… “well, how will my work be affected?” said Andrea Guzman, an associate professor at Northern Illinois University who researches human-machine communications. According to Fellows, this concern appeared in pop culture and in films such as Desk Set, a 1957 romantic comedy financed by IBM. In the film, Katharine Hepburn and her fellow office workers are introduced to a supercomputer called EMERAC (Electromagnetic Memory and Numerical Research Computer), or simply Miss EMMY. After initial fears that she would make the other women’s jobs obsolete, EMMY eventually becomes a trusted member of the team. “IBM’s goal was pretty clear: address concerns that computers would take everyone’s jobs by showing a happy workplace and a non-threatening, feminine computer,” Fellows said. WATCH: Office Set Trailer: The search for natural language continued outside of movie theaters with Eliza, a text-based chat bot program created by programmer Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966. It was designed to mimic a psychotherapist, inviting people to share their personal problems and respond accordingly. Several early adopters described forming a close personal attachment to Eliza based on their conversations with her. According to a Weizenbaum paper, his secretary once asked him to leave the room so she and Eliza could have a private conversation.
“A compliant, helpful female assistant”
In building today’s digital assistants, Eliza was an important reference point. In fact, when Siri first launched in 2011, if you asked her to tell a story about “her,” she would tell a story about her friend, Eliza. With few other real-world examples, designers often looked to modern science fiction for inspiration. “If you think about it, we weren’t really interacting with artificial intelligence or anything that looked like it was artificial intelligence until we started seeing these intelligent assistants coming,” Guzman said. WATCH: Star Trek’s computer voice gets a ‘lovable’ personality upgrade: One of the most recognizable references was the computer in Star Trek, most often narrated by Majel Barrett. Of course not every fictional computer was known for its friendly female voice. Take HAL 9000, the antagonist of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s no wonder that if you asked the original Siri of 2011 if she knew HAL, she’d say, “I’d rather not talk about HAL.” The trope of the sexy, female supporting character continued in The Stepford Wives from 1975. Rachael the copycat from Blade Runner who works as a secretary. and EDI, the ship’s computer from the Mass Effect games that is finally uploaded to a curved chrome body. “Siri’s original gender as female in 2011 is not surprising. It’s not going to take your job,” Fellows said. “She’s not going to hurt you. Like Star Trek’s Eliza and the computer, she’s a submissive, helpful female sidekick.” Jennifer Jill Fellows, professor of philosophy at Douglas College in New Westminster, BC, and co-producer of the documentary Ideas A Harem of Computers. (Jennifer Jill Fellows)
‘I’d blush if I could’
This trend of sexualization has crept into Siri, at least when it was introduced. A 2019 UNESCO report noted that if you asked Siri, “Siri, are you a slut?” he would reply, “I would blush if I could.” The report characterized Siri’s responses as reinforcing sexism and potentially contributing to rape culture by normalizing the sexual harassment of women. Since the report, Apple has changed the way Siri answers this question. He’ll just say, “I’m not going to answer that.” These kinds of changes may not seem terribly important to some people who just want a friendly voice to tell them the weather without turning on the TV or radio. But for Fournier-Tombs, it’s important that the so-called tools of the future don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. “If we as a society try to evolve and try to have new gender norms… we can’t do it [if] more of the tools we use just spread those stereotypes,” he said. “They affect our culture and slow us down that way.” Eleonore Fournier-Tombs is a senior researcher at the United Nations University Institute in Macau. (Eleonore Fournier-Tombs)
