美国国家公共电台 NPR The Push For A Gender-Neutral Siri

 

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

I'm Ailsa Chang with All Tech Considered.

(SOUNDBITE OF ULRICH SCHNAUSS' "NOTHING HAPPENS IN JUNE")

CHANG: Have you ever noticed something that most virtual assistants have in common? Just take a listen.

SIRI: My name is Siri.

CORTANA: Cortana here. How can I help?

ALEXA: My name is Alexa.

CHANG: Siri, Cortana, Alexa all start out mostly with female voices as their defaults. That's riled up a group of marketing¹ and ad executives, tech experts and academics. They've gotten together to question the company's decisions and are campaigning for a change. NPR's Laura Sydell reports.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAR TREK²: THE ORIGINAL SERIES")

LAURA SYDELL, BYLINE³: There's a story about why Amazon's Alexa was given a female voice.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "STAR TREK: THE ORIGINAL SERIES")

WILLIAM SHATNER: (As Captain Kirk) Information on Anton Karidian.

MAJEL BARRETT: (As Enterprise Computer) Director and star of traveling company of actors.

SYDELL: Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos is a "Star Trek" fan. Alex Spinelli used to run the team that created the software for Amazon's Alexa.

ALEX SPINELLI: A big part of launching Alexa, the idea, was creating the "Star Trek" computer. The "Star Trek" computer was a woman.

SYDELL: That's a story that bothers Robert LoCascio.

ROBERT LOCASCIO: That's just not a good enough reason to make a technology a woman.

SYDELL: LoCascio is the CEO of LivePerson, a company that builds chatbots and AI personas for brands. Chatbots are those little characters that pop up on your screen to offer help. LoCascio says the male-dominated AI industry brings its own unconscious bias⁴ to the decision of what gender⁵ to make a virtual assistant.

LOCASCIO: That's why I believe it's, like, some guy is somewhere going, yeah, my mom - she's great at doing tasks. That's great, so I'll make it a woman's voice.

SYDELL: LoCascio is one of the leaders of an effort called the Equal AI Initiative. Its members include Arianna Huffington and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. LoCascio has a 2-year-old daughter. He was troubled that each of the major virtual assistants - Cortana, Alexa, Siri and the Google Assistant - had female voices and mostly female names.

LOCASCIO: If you talk derogatory to an Alexa, children pick this up. They go back to school, and they think this is the way you talk to someone, and this may be the way you talk to women.

SYDELL: LoCascio says it's important to act now because we're on the cusp of a major AI revolution. Over the next decade, these characters are likely to become ubiquitous at home, work, inside cars. The companies defend their choices. Many, including Amazon, say they tested different voices, and customers liked the women better. Deborah Harrison is manager of the Cortana editorial team at Microsoft.

DEBORAH HARRISON: We had done some research about how people responded to different kinds of voices in different formats⁶. At that time, people were responding better to the female voices.

SYDELL: It's not surprising to Justine Cassell that American consumers prefer the female voice. Cassell is also a member of the Equal AI Initiative, and she is dean at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She says cultures have unconscious biases⁷. Take Apple's Siri. The company won't say why, but in Great Britain, it launched Siri with a male voice. Cassell thinks it's because the British have always had male servants.

JUSTINE CASSELL: Apple may be wishing to evoke⁸ that stereotype⁹ of the always helpful, always present valet.

SYDELL: In Germany, when BMW launched a GPS system with a female voice, the company got complaints from male customers who didn't want a woman telling them what to do according to the late Stanford University researcher Clifford Nass. Google and Apple now let customers choose a male voice, but Cassell and others are pushing a third option, the gender-ambiguous virtual assistant. Cassell says they do a little pitch adjusting to the voice, and it's harder to tell what gender it is. Here's the voice of a gender-neutral tutor for kids that Cassell created.

COMPUTER-GENERATED VOICE: If I have three apples, and I take one apple away, how many apples do I have?

CASSELL: Two.

SYDELL: Cassell says most people project their own gender onto the character. Cassell and LivePerson's LoCascio say what's most important to consumers isn't gender. LoCascio says he wants to help companies understand what people want from virtual assistants. LivePerson works with GoDaddy, an Internet domain¹⁰ registration¹¹ firm which is developing chatbots to help customers. Robert Ashby, GoDaddy senior director of digital care, says what he learned is that customers need to feel heard.

ROBERT ASHBY: You could make it male or female, and as long as it's really hitting that core of empathy and support, that is the core to success, especially in a care engagement.

SYDELL: GoDaddy is working on a gender-neutral chatbot. The home improvement chain Lowe's is, too. With help from LivePerson, it's creating a genderless character to help customers with questions about outdoor grills¹³. It's just called Grill¹² Master. Alexa might like all these efforts to empower women.

Alexa, are you a feminist¹⁴?

ALEXA: Yes, I'm a feminist as defined by believing in gender equality.

SYDELL: The question is whether her makers¹⁵ at Amazon are willing to take a risk and offer an alternative to Alexa, maybe an Alex. Laura Sydell, NPR News.

1 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

2 trek   

vi.作长途艰辛的旅行；n.长途艰苦的旅行

参考例句：

• We often go pony-trek in the summer.夏季我们经常骑马旅行。
• It took us the whole day to trek across the rocky terrain.我们花了一整天的时间艰难地穿过那片遍布岩石的地带。

3 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

4 bias   

n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见

参考例句：

• They are accusing the teacher of political bias in his marking.他们在指控那名教师打分数有政治偏见。
• He had a bias toward the plan.他对这项计划有偏见。

5 gender   

n.（生理上的）性，（名词、代词等的）性

参考例句：

• French differs from English in having gender for all nouns.法语不同于英语，所有的名词都有性。
• Women are sometimes denied opportunities solely because of their gender.妇女有时仅仅因为性别而无法获得种种机会。

6 formats   

n.（出版物的）版式( format的名词复数 )；[电视]电视节目的总安排（或计划）

参考例句：

• They are producing books in all kinds of different formats. 他们出版各种不同开本的书籍。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• A true GUI includes standard formats for representing text and graphics. 真正的图形用户界面包括表示文字和图形的标准格式。 来自互联网

7 biases   

偏见( bias的名词复数 )； 偏爱； 特殊能力； 斜纹

参考例句：

• Stereotypes represent designer or researcher biases and assumptions, rather than factual data. 它代表设计师或者研究者的偏见和假设，而不是实际的数据。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• The net effect of biases on international comparisons is easily summarized. 偏差对国际比较的基本影响容易概括。

8 evoke   

vt.唤起，引起，使人想起

参考例句：

• These images are likely to evoke a strong response in the viewer.这些图像可能会在观众中产生强烈反响。
• Her only resource was the sympathy she could evoke.她以凭借的唯一力量就是她能从人们心底里激起的同情。

9 stereotype   

n.固定的形象，陈规，老套，旧框框

参考例句：

• He's my stereotype of a schoolteacher.他是我心目中的典型教师。
• There's always been a stereotype about successful businessmen.人们对于成功商人一直都有一种固定印象。

10 domain   

n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围

参考例句：

• This information should be in the public domain.这一消息应该为公众所知。
• This question comes into the domain of philosophy.这一问题属于哲学范畴。

11 registration   

n.登记，注册，挂号

参考例句：

• Marriage without registration is not recognized by law.法律不承认未登记的婚姻。
• What's your registration number?你挂的是几号？

12 grill   

n.烤架，铁格子，烤肉；v.烧，烤，严加盘问

参考例句：

• Put it under the grill for a minute to brown the top.放在烤架下烤一分钟把上面烤成金黄色。
• I'll grill you some mutton.我来给你烤一些羊肉吃。

13 grills   

n.烤架( grill的名词复数 )；（一盘）烤肉；格板；烧烤餐馆v.烧烤( grill的第三人称单数 )；拷问，盘问

参考例句：

• Backyard barbecue grills could be proscribed. 里弄烤肉店会被勒令停业的。 来自辞典例句
• Both side inlets have horizontal grills and incorporate impressive fog lamps. 两侧进气口的水平烤架并纳入令人印象深刻的雾灯。 来自互联网

14 feminist   

adj.主张男女平等的，女权主义的

参考例句：

• She followed the feminist movement.她支持女权运动。
• From then on,feminist studies on literature boomed.从那时起，男女平等受教育的现象开始迅速兴起。

15 makers   

n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式）

参考例句：

• The makers of the product assured us that there had been no sacrifice of quality. 这一产品的制造商向我们保证说他们没有牺牲质量。
• The makers are about to launch out a new product. 制造商们马上要生产一种新产品。 来自《简明英汉词典》