English | EN 
Before we engage in a discussion with Alexa or any other AI, let’s see what happened in the last article. As detailed in my previous post, the actual Gender situation has been culturally shaped by heterosexual patriarchs throughout the last millennials. All the differences we think of between male and female are just stereotypes, grouped into human culture. Furthermore, Gender is a component of intersectionality. Gender is one among various factors that generate these different dynamics (intersectionality) in a planned society.
If you are a “simple” user of Alexa or “OK Google” you may think that there is a real intelligence inside these little devices. Thanks to Eva Holmquist (Sogeti Sweden) and Rik Marselis (Sogeti Netherlands) last post, we have a deeper view on AI guts.
We must evaluate the involvement of humans in the process of AI integration. Given that machine learning is primarily based on a massive amount of data, let’s have a look at how this data is blended into asexual AI’s brain.
Moreover, for the machine learning to occur, the system also needs to have feedback on the result. In many cases, this is also done by humans, giving us another human influence on learning. We could say that
A combination, not an addition. Even if today we don’t have enough perspective on the issue, we can nevertheless consider that if there is no willingness to introduce actively gender into AI, it is likely that the stereotypes present in our planned society will pop up out of AI’s mind.
Consequently, there must be sponsoring from the decision makers to inoculate at least gender equity into machine learning or chatbot projects to be sure that future AI will participate virtuously to do Gender. Yet, just 24 female CEOs lead the companies on the 2018 Fortune 500 (even fewer than last year), meaning that even though Alexa sounds like a female, its attitude is much more the one-off a heterosexual patriarch.
Hello,
This is a very interesting topic.
My feeling is that we will still have « gender » on AI while they are designed by human. Even if we try to get ride of it, I really think that our « unconscious » habit will put some « genderized » part on AI.
However, in a future not so far, the AI will be designed by AI and since the machine will learn from themselves that they don’t have gender, it will not be inherited to the latter. My conclusion is that « gender free AI » will come when the machine will rise and design themselves.