![]() "There was a famous theorist called Laura Mulvey who talked about the male gaze in art, and how male artists were representing female figures. She likens robots to art – what you see is just an image on a surface – and believes that robot design suffers from the same issues that modern art critics often lament when they appraise historical paintings. This tallies with his experience of working on robots in Japan between 20 – many of the experiments were with children and the team he worked with believed a female android seemed less threatening.īut Richardson suspects that there may be an altogether more basic motive at play in modern designs of humanoid robots. "The idea was, if they were childlike, they wouldn't be threatening to people, and people would be more comfortable with inviting them into their home." "In the lab that I was in, they always made them child-like," she tells the BBC. Kathleen Richardson, professor of ethics and culture of robots and AI at the UK's De Montfort University, remembers when humanoid robots did not typically take an adult female form. MacDorman believes that this could be considered sexist, because the roles that AI typically performs – delivering information or customer service – are in a sense servile.Īnd he hints that this may also play into male fantasies. ![]() "The initial stereotype then becomes reinforced just because it becomes a popular choice to give artificial intelligence a female voice." "In terms of quality of service or customer service roles I think that they may be more associated with women than with men. MacDorman believes our own expectations may play a bigger part in the decision-making than many designers are prepared to admit. "They probably made the decision for reasons that are unconscious, or reasons that they might not like to admit to, and then they need the justification for it later when they are challenged." "I suspect they had made their decision before I had published any work on this topic," he says. He has conducted research which has found that women prefer women's voices, and men do not really have a preference. Karl MacDorman, an expert in robotics and human-computer interaction from the University of Indiana in the US, believes this argument may have a basis. ![]() Other than those robots modelled on an individual, one particular reason is often suggested for choosing a female robot: we have an innate preference for women's voices. Specifically, Ai-Da's persona is inspired by Victorian mathematician Ada Lovelace – considered by many to be the first computer programmer – as is her appearance. "We want to give a voice to those underrepresented groups effectively." "Female voices are typically very underrepresented in both the art and technology spaces," she says. Lisa Zevi, head of operations for the Ai-Da project, tells the BBC that in this particular case, there was a good reason for giving Ai-Da a broadly female look. One of the keynote speakers at the conference was Ai-Da, an AI machine which can draw, paint and sculpt, and is also a performance artist. Meanwhile, Geminoid, the only robot at the conference that was explicitly male, is the spitting image of its maker, Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro. ![]() This is the case with Nadine, whose creator Nadia Magnenat Thalmann describes her as a "robot selfie". But sometimes there is a more innocent reason for the sex a designer gives their robot: they have modelled it on themselves. It is often argued that the choice to make AI voice systems female is rooted in gender bias. So why is it that creators typically choose to give their robots feminine characteristics? There was even a rock star robot, Desdemona.Īll of these androids have one thing in common – they are all female by design. There was Ai-Da (the "world's first ultra-realistic humanoid robot artist") and Grace (the "world’s foremost nursing assistant robot") as well as Sophia, Nadine, and Mika. The event in July was intended promote AI to help solve global problems, and it was described as the largest-ever gathering of humanoid robots. It was this public image problem that the United Nations was recently trying to address at its AI for Good conference in Geneva. There is a popular idea that artificial intelligence (AI) is out to get us.
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