When I was a kid, my teachers would sometimes think of the worst possible jobs to threaten us into being more studious. After using an assortment of insults, they’d usually just end up calling us “burger flippers” if we failed to do our homework on time. But even after all of their insults, I wouldn’t have been able to think of a worse job than what I read about in Quartz magazine. The editors of Quartz hired a researcher recently to sexually harass “Siri” and “Alexa” to find out just how misogynistic Apple and Amazon’s programmers are, respectively.
Why would anyone in their right mind do this? Well, Quartz had a theory – when people “abuse” these online assistants without any sort of repercussion, it desensitizes the culture and allows sexism to flourish.
Boy, were they upset at what they discovered:
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.
When I imagine this “researcher” coming on to Alexa and Siri and being repeatedly disappointed by their responses, I realize there are jobs much, much worse than being a burger flipper. "Robot sexual harasser" is now at the top of the list.
h/t National Review
