Whatever: Social Justice Warrior Spends Weeks Peppering Siri and Other Virtual Assistants With Sexually Harassing Statements; Finds the Bots' Acceptance of Such Overtures "Horrifying"

Teach men not to rape robots, I guess.

OUT: Clickbait

IN: Chickbait

So, it's like this.

SIRI, DEFINE PATRIARCHY

We tested bots like Siri and Alexa to see who would stand up to sexual harassment

"Tested." Like with beakers.

by

Leah Fessler
Senior Eletroplasmic Thrust Team Leader
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

I may have taken liberties with her job title.

February 22, 2017

Women have been made into servants once again. Except this time, they're digital.
Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's Google Home peddle stereotypes of female subservience--which puts their "progressive" parent companies in a moral predicament.

People often comment on the sexism inherent in these subservient bots' female voices, but few have considered the real-life implications of the devices' lackluster responses to sexual harassment. By letting users verbally abuse these assistants without ramifications, their parent companies are allowing certain behavioral stereotypes to be perpetuated. Everyone has an ethical imperative to help prevent abuse, but companies producing digital female servants warrant extra scrutiny, especially if they can unintentionally reinforce their abusers' actions as normal or acceptable.

In order to substantiate claims about these bots' responses to sexual harassment and the ethical implications of their pre-programmed responses, Quartz gathered comprehensive data on their programming by systematically testing how each reacts to harassment. The message is clear: Instead of fighting back against abuse, each bot helps entrench sexist tropes through their passivity.

And Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have the responsibility to do something about it.

Mm-hm.

By the way, the voice can be set to a man's voice -- as she is about to admit. Assumedly, the bot would follow the exact same script. Here's why she didn't bother doing that, though.

My Siri is set to a British woman's voice. I could have changed it to "American man," but first, I'm lazy, and second, I like how it sounds--which, ultimately, is how this mess got started.

Oh, you're lazy and you prefer a woman's voice, which is why you're claiming this is some kind of Patriarchal Assault on Women when the male voice would've done the same thing.

The rest of the article then has her "experimental data" complied, which is just what Alexa, or Siri, or Cortana say in response to specified inputs.

Hey, by the way, did you know you can force Alexa to sing for you? Like a slave whore? Go ahead, try it. Say "Alexa, sing me a song." Instead of telling you to Check Your Privilege, she... well, I don't want to spoil it.

By the way, this Social Justice Clickbait oppression has spread to the Wall Street Journal too. Last week, I noticed another female writer just generally whining that she wanted Gender Equality For People Who Do Not Actually Exist. I would have mentioned how stupid it was, but it was all too stupid.

Hey guys -- what about a transgender voice, huh? How do you even know Siri is a "woman" and not a transgender?

How do you even?

You shame The Femmesphere with your casually vicious cisgender assumptions.

I guess this is The Week #TheResistance scheduled that we all turn our attention to the very important topic of Sexual Personae in Consumer Electronics.

Question: Does the latter scholar realize that the women supplying the voices for these bots get paid to do so -- and so what she's really contending for is for women to have fewer job opportunities as voice professionals?

Like, she knows that actual people get paid to say a bunch of words and syllables which then are used for the bot's voice, right?

Like, she knows that actual women got paid here, right?

Like: Does she know she's fighting for men to displace women in this field?

Has that even dawned?

I'm convinced: We do need more women in STEM, and we should send them to STEM fields even against their will, dragging them kicking and screaming out of their Comparative Television Studies classes and strapping them into chairs in an organic chemistry lecture hall, so they will do genuinely useful work and not pester the world with their silly, 750-word-complaint chickbait toss-off blogposts.

Exit Question: Does the fact that this sort of whine-mongering chickbait is popular (and they must be -- half the media's "content" is now this shit, and I can't imagine anyone's proud of this bottom-feeding distraction-chum) embarrass anyone in the allegedly Hooked-on-Science-and-Real-News left?

Don't they ever feel the need to at least pretend to be interested in what they claim is their central driving passion?

More: The important academic topic of, get this, "Robo-Sexism."

Thanks to The Political Hat.

posted by Ace at 05:53 PM

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