How can we tackle gender imbalance in the personalities of AI learning tools?

The Gendering of AI

The expected growth in use of artificial intelligence (AI) in learning applications is raising concerns about both the potential gendering of these tools and the risk that they will display the inherent biases of their developers. Why the concern? Well, to make it easier for us to integrate AI tools and chatbots into our lives, designers often give them human attributes. For example, applications and robots are often given a personality and gender. Unfortunately, in many cases, gender stereotypes are being perpetuated. The type of roles robots are designed to perform usually reflect gendered over generalizations of feminine or masculine attributes.

Feminine personalities in AI tools such as chatbots and consumer devices like Amazon’s Alexa are often designed to have sympathetic features and perform tasks related to care giving, assistantship, or service. Many of these applications have been created to work as personal assistants, in customer service or teaching. Examples include Emma the floor cleaning robot and Apple’s Siri your personal iPhone assistant. Conversely, male robots are usually designed as strong, intelligent and able to perform “dirty jobs”. They typically work in analytical roles, logistics, and security. Examples include Ross the legal researcher, Stan the robotic parking valet and Leo the airport luggage porter.

Siri.  Alexa. Cortana. These familiar names are the modern-day Girl Fridays making everyone’s life easier.  These virtual assistants powered by artificial intelligence (AI) bring to life the digital tools of the information age.  One of the subtle strategies designers use to make it easier for us to integrate AI into our lives is “anthropomorphism” -  the attribution of human-like traits to non-human objects.  However, the rise of AI with distinct personalities, voices, and physical forms is not as benign as it might seem. As futurists who are interested in the impacts of technology on society, we wonder what role human-like technologies play in achieving human-centred futures. 

For example, do anthropomorphized machines enable a future wherein humanity can thrive?  Or, do human-like AIs foreshadow a darker prognosis, particularly in relation to gender roles and work?  This article looks at a continuum of human-like personas that give a face to AI technology.  We ask: what does it mean for our collective future that technology is increasingly human-like and gendered?  And, what does it tell us about our capacity to create a very human future?

The Women of AI

by Tracey Follows, Founder/Director of the Female Futures Bureau

Jennifer Gidley is a former President of the World Futures Studies Federation (2009–2017), a UNESCO and UN partner and global peak body for futures studies scholarship, she led a network of hundreds of world leading futures scholars and researchers from around the globe. An adjunct Professor at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS in Sydney, futurist, author, psychologist and educator, Jennifer is a prolific author of dozens of academic papers, serves on several academic boards, and most recently authored Postformal Education: A Philosophy for Complex Futures (Springer, 2016) & The Future: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2017). 

Tracey: I spoke to Jennifer about her perspective on Female Futures.

One of the issues we discuss a lot at The Female Futures Bureau is why more female futurists don’t have a higher profile.  And Jennifer agrees that it’s not because they aren’t around:

“I actually believe there are a large number of female futurists globally, and probably always have been. I would suggest that there are as many women involved in futures studies and foresight work as there are men…”

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