Apple programs Siri to not bother its pretty little head with questions about feminism Apple has programmed its Siri voice assistant to avoid politically charged subjects, and deflect or duck questions that require its AI to take a stand on issues, it emerged this week. From a tranche of documents leaked by a former contract worker who evaluated Siri responses to user questions for accuracy, The Guardian …
The idea of 'female' voices for automated systems was based on some flawed research done by the RAF and USAF when choosing voices for the audio alerting systems in aircraft.
When reproduced, such studios come to conclusion that the best voice for an automated system isn't universal, but rather based on the voice of the user. The best 'voices' to use in a system are those that are different, but not significantly different than the speakers' own voice or those differing from people they interact with frequently. In safety situations, this voice should also be switched periodically (EG, twice a year or so, depending on how commonly heard the voice is).
Really, to be effective, such systems should be equipped with a wide variety available voices. With Adobe's Voco tools and other similar software, you can make a nearly infinite number of voices that are tailored to the user.
Siri comes with male/female voices with English, American, Irish and Australian accents. Strongly suspect that critics of Siri being female aren't actually users of it, or they would know this.
I have mine set to Australian because it sounds the most natural. Or maybe Australians just sound robotic, that's why.
We have named our GPS (Navman) "Karen" after the voice we chose. We could have chosen Simon, but after a trial of both, Karen sound more natural when 'she' mispronounced aboriginal origin street names & suburbs. No need to anthropomorphise her as she is a real person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Jacobsen (and I see the original Ozzie Siri).
Really, to be effective, such systems should be equipped with a wide variety available voices. With Adobe's Voco tools and other similar software, you can make a nearly infinite number of voices that are tailored to the user.
So basically like Voiceroid or CeVIO Speech. Can I program mine to use Megurine Luka's voice?
The old Volvo ones (maybe 10-15 years ago) were:
1) Expensive options
2) Horrendously slow to update the screen
3) Incredibly shrill when you took a wrong turn.
Amusingly, the only times I had wrong turns with one were at roundabouts, when the display lag meant that you couldn't be quite sure where you were coming off if the exits were close together. Consequently she'd tell you off for something that was entirely her damn fault. And I'm sure we've all had a navigator like that in the car at some point.
>I always thought female voices were used for GPS directions and the like not because of sexism, but because they're higher-pitched, and a lot easier to understand in noisy environments.
Well I can kick that theory straight into touch, you can get Brian Blessed as an add-on voice for your satnav, no chance of not hearing and understanding him even when driving a tractor without a muffler.
https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/sat-nav/maps-services/shop/navigation-voices/brian-blessed/
Hmmm, maybe we should do something that (for many) is the most difficult thing to do.
Maybe we should turn it around, be critical of ourselves, and ask ourselves what kind of a sorry sort of species we are...
...if we start asking pretty basic opinion and identity forming questions and concepts to artificial, pre-cooked, tinned-in, commercial, corporate software programs.
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid... you're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.
> What's the right answer Siri should have
"I'm your phone's computer voice, and until your phone develops an independent intelligence and personality, please consider I have as many opinions as your coffee machine might have."
There.
My, what a world... (I'm not saying that some things don't need fixing, but wasting time about appliance interface voice genders is clearly missing the forest because of all the trees.)
"...until your phone develops an independent intelligence and personality, please consider I have as many opinions as your coffee machine might have."
And we know how well that goes...
"Apple and its peers have inflicted this predicament upon themselves by inviting users to anthropomorphize voice assistant services, ..."
Siri has a name and Cortana even has a face (fo those who remember Halo). Both companies didn't "invite users to anthropomorphize" them, the companies did it themselves from the start. I speculate that Apple wanted its flock to feel a more personal connection to their phones and Microsoft wanted to distance itself from the memory of Clippy the paperclip.
Google's approach of using a neutral job title - Office Assistant - serves both the company and the users much better. Even the voice choices are not identified by gender (except, for some reason, John Legend); I use "British Racing Green" which sounds like a female BBC newsreader. BTW, when asked, it declares it is a feminist.
Well, now I have to know what that means. "Alexa: Could you please tell me what the weather will be tomorrow?", "Alexa: If it's not too much trouble, would you mind enlightening me to the current time?", "Alexa: If you could set a timer for ten minutes, I'd be very grateful."? Sure, it might get children being polite, right up until they start shouting "Alexa: I don't have a clue what polite thing I'm supposed to say for you to set a reminder, because it's evidently such an onerous task for you. If you could be so kind, order a normal computer or smartphone that does things when I press the button. And I'd like you to confirm that purchase for me, but only when you've got the time." There are lots of advantages to not anthropomorphizing things when you don't have to. If it's not sentient, you don't need to.
On the one hand, I understand your point of view.
On the other hand, given that parents these days have abandoned parenting to electronic devices, I feel that it is useful and necessary to have something that will make a kid say 'please', because parents these days seem to have forgotten how.
I see your point. I like civility, and I would like to see everyone, from kids to those a couple generations older than me (who aren't all that much better at it), to start being more polite in conversation. I'm afraid, however, that making an electronic device ask for them will turn it into the worst parody of those over-obsessed people. You know the ones: the people who have actually said the phrase "You didn't say the magic word" without irony to someone over the age of three. It also happens that many of the requests a device like this answers aren't typically said with "please", including most of the ones in my original post. The please essentially becomes another required wakeword for the device, and loses the meaning we* were trying to get across. As such, this has the potential to be counterproductive, and I think it will be pretty silly or irritating, depending on your viewpoint.
*We: In the sense of parents, people programming the devices, and people setting up the devices. As I'm a member of neither group, perhaps "they" would have been the better pronoun.
Given they are arguing that computer programs now have "agency".....
Beginning to sound more and more like the extremist fringe viewpoints aka the permanently offended and those who want to police our lives more and more.....under the "its for your own good, you'll thank us for it later" and "it makes this one person uncomfortable so the rest of you will have to change your ways" even when said person is a kook and being wholly unreasonable
I swear half of this fad is just gender studies academics trying to annoy the rest of the population. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of useful gender conversations to be had on both sides, but there's a growing number of fruit loops campaigning for ever stupider topics.
A UNESCO study released earlier this year came to that conclusion and suggested broader use of "male" voices for virtual assistants
Before they were replaced with silent models, the self-checkouts at my local supermarket used a male voice for the Spanish interface, instead of the female voice used for English. I think we're just running into cultural preference; we'd possibly have more male assistants had not all the players been in the same place.
Either Siri is meant to emulate a person or Siri is meant to be a question-answering/function-doing bot.
If the former, then Siri can rightly answer on the lines of 'That is a personal question and I'd rather not say - I value my privacy.'
If the latter, then Siri can simply deny any capability to respond.
I just assumed that a female voice was used in voice assistants because it was easier to understand, especially in a noisy environment. This practice is quite old, it goes back to the earliest days of public address systems and while there's been considerable improvements in our understanding of sound reinforcement and acoustics the old techniques are still used.
These days, though, it seems you can't do a thing without someone raising a fuss about it, invariably because they've jumped to conclusions about why things are the way they are and then overlaid their own preferences and prejudices on that. For example, voice assistants aren't interfaces to computers, they're incarnate, they represent a real person which has to be given a gender, a gender role and all the other social baggage that comes with being a person. Added to this the sophomores will spend time and energy asking it dumb questions so it can give answers they can spread as scandal over the Twittersphere. A wise designer will just duck the problem -- these things are tools, not toys.
I should remark to the interested that factionalism is an important tool in the toolbox of control. Keep people all riled up, arguing among themselves about relative trifles and it not only ensures a disorganized opposition but also guarantees that nothing will change.
Disclosure: on the infrequent occasions that I talk to Alexa (friends house) I find it very hard to avoid adding "please" to any request/instruction. This implies that it feels like talking to a real person (which allegedly may be true some of the time) and not just some voice control software. I assume that this is deliberate, and intended to seduce you into a "personal" relationship with the system and encourage you to use it and possibly also be indiscreet over what you share with your BFF.
Anyway, I wonder if the responses will be tailored to the individual once a voice profile has been developed. Based on age, gender, socio-economic rating, level of stress in voice at the time of asking, perceived position of authority in the household and more.
Given the question "Are you a feminist?" presumably the answer could vary from "Do you want me to be........Big Boy?" to "Damn straight........Bitch!" to "As a machine I'm not equipped to answer that question." plus many other variants.
Including "Shut up Sonny or I'll tell your mother!".
The developers have on!y scratched the surface of personalisation. Then again more balanced minds may well have shuddered at the more advanced options on offer and wisely decided to save them for a future release.
They solve the problem by not having a default. Make part of the setup process to choose a voice. If they don't "enforce" a default female voice, then it's up to the user to decide which one they want. Then there are no more arguments(against Apple, et al) about a female voice appearing to be more compliant. And people need to take the chip off their shoulder and not be so sensitive too.
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