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[Music]
good to be here at the 35th
Congress
um today um we have a lecture regarding
something that adds me particularly very
well since I
am I am as well very keen to give my
toys tools and so cars computers and
whatever is surrounding me a
name and uh so we're going to discuss
actually we're going to have a lecture
that's called our machines
fine I don't know how it's exactly comes
but most of my machines are femine as
well my car my computer
and once in a while I have to touch them
and really treat them well maybe that's
the kind of behavior that I have towards
these things then it's maybe as well
because of my Twisted mind that I
consider these machines as being um you
have to take care about them otherwise
you can do really weird things but this
lecture then is actually about exploring
the relations between design and
perception of machines and the Dynamics
in
between the lecture is provided by
Polaris and uh she will take it's she in
this case I may say she will take uh
actually an angle at the examination
about how we map
gender on computers and
machines uh we will look a little bit
into the
software uh in machine human interaction
I saw a really interesting field there
the relationship in between and we will
we will dig a little bit deeper in the
cultural history of imagining and
building humanik
machines I would love to see polares
here on stage please ladies and
gentlemen give her a warm
welcome Polaris
thank you all for coming today I know
it's early and it's on the last day so I
appreciate that you're here on the other
side I do feel a bit pressured to uh
make your time worthwhile um as much
essentially in at such an early hour in
the day so uh let's start I would like
to introduce someone to you this is my
assistant ducky um I will come back to
him if I Stumble in my wordss or if I'm
too nervous then he
will bail for me so let's go get going
with a talk our machines feminine why
did I ask that
question I observed that in cars
smartphones and computers when we have a
voice
synthesis that a lot of these voices
tend to be
female I wondered about that because
machines per se do not have a gender on
which we could map that too although one
could argue what is gender we might get
to that point later on and before I
start off uh with my short take on um
History Two uh disclaimers one I cannot
talk about the entirety of how uh we
relate gender to machines that's a
really big field so I have narrowed it
down in this case on voices because this
is something I know more about and
secondly I will talk about some movies
and books I will spoil all of them I'm
sorry but I'm very appreciative of your
attention most of the time but
particularly in that case you can just
let it slip if you don't know if you
don't want the thing spoiler that I
mention let's begin with some history
anthropomorphizing machines is by no
means something new this is a painting
um by Jean lam jiram a French artist who
which depicts um a story from Greek
mythology called pigmalion on
Gala and this story is about uh a guy
pigmalion who is disappointed by all of
Womanhood yet they really don't live up
to his expectations might be because of
his
expectations and therefore he goes into
his Workshop he's a sculptor and he
makes his own perfect woman out of
marble but well I didn't think he
thought that through to the end because
she can't love him back she's a
stone then then he dispares and he cries
and the goddess ofer has Mercy with him
and lets this Stone woman come to life
and they live happily every after so I
think that's that's not as common in
Greek mythology so that's that's a
point but what this story depicts here
is a Trope that I would say I found
again and again in science fiction of
the later centuries where we have a
masculine creator that creates a
feminine creation or
machine what you see here are actually
two examples from technological history
the thing on your left is a so-called
called kakur ninga that is I I guess I
butched that um pronunciation but I try
this is an automata from the 17th
century in Japan these were um small
figures that could move around when you
put a little teac cup onto the plate
that were they were holding then an
internal mechanism would get them going
and they would roll across the room to
the guest you wanted to serve your tea
to on the other hand side we see another
kind of automa um this one is
calledo um it was a music making
automator and she had a kind of a duler
that's the instrument is called um it's
something like a piano just without the
keys and you would just like tap on the
strings what I already found interesting
about these machines um they were
usually at the beginning um Clockwork um
Clockworks that were just we had clocks
and then
the engineers who built them made little
figures that would also be powered by
the Clockwork and would move around and
then this um got uh innovated more and
more and to the point that we had um
figures that would um do other things
than telling the time from uh this Epoch
we have autometer which can play the
piano which can um draw things and which
can also write
things roughly the same time
looking at literature how these machines
were
imagined um on your left side we have
Des zandman or the Sandman from a
Hoffman which is mostly a story about
childhood and fear but it also features
a protagonist called naan or Nathaniel
Who falls in love with a woman she she
doesn't really respond to him she
doesn't really speak with him maybe
she's not the talkative type but they
dance together they play piano together
and she's a bit stiff and in the end he
recognizes oh no it's a machine it's not
really a woman built by the antagonist
of the
story on the other side we have
tomorrow's
Eve although I'm not very happy with the
themes that are or the way that the
themes are played out in the story I
think it's fascinating because to me it
seems something like the first science
fiction fan fiction of its time it
features Thomas Edison who builds a
robot girlfriend for an Englishman he
owes a favor to and this was at the time
where Thomas Edison was still alive yes
this Addison who built the light
bulb and again in these stories you see
this I or I see this stereotype of like
the masculine inventor who builds a
feminine machine to serve his needs or
execute his
commands rough at the same time mid of
the 19th century we have this little
thing this is the euphonia and this is
one of the earliest speaking machines
this um device tried to emulate how
humans speak on a mechanical
level for that I would shortly explain
how speaking as such works on a very
rough basis you take air into your lungs
and then you push it through uh the
larynx and there you have the vocal
folds which which start to vibr vibrate
and this vibration then propagates
further into the fings and into the oral
cavity and there you have all different
kinds of things like the tongue and the
teeth and the lips which then form the
sound that is then expelled through
through your mouth which encod which
encodes information which lets me
communicate with you at right
now how did this work with the
euphonia we had a Bellow over there that
was something uh like a lung that would
then expunge air um in the direction of
this tube I think I'll go back to the
other picture that was nicer yeah here
you can see it a bit more clearly where
you you'd had something that imitated
the vocal fold which would start
vibrating and then would be expelled
here through this kind of synthetic
mouth um which also featured a synthetic
tongue which then would form the sounds
that were produced by this machine
ma what I
again thought is is memorable is on top
of that mouth that you had um which was
had a mechanical function you had a head
modeled around this and to me this again
looks rather feminine maybe this
inventor he's called Faba uh who was a
German immigrant in the US was inspired
uh by the literature that came
before maybe uh it he designed this to
his own whims we don't know sadly this
machine was destroyed in a fit of rage
by its inventor because it didn't get
the appreciation from the public that he
had hoped
for going further through time now with
the new uh media of film uh we still
have the same trope
which can be seen in
Metropolis uh short or silent film
Masterpiece directed by Fritz Lang the
basic story is of a big uh Metropolitan
city that is a rainover by a big
capitalist boss called feden and um a
working class which keeps the machines
of the city and the city is such running
and we have the son of um that uh
capitalist boss of everything uh Freda
who descends down into the lower parts
of the city and discovers the workers
and tries to um gets to help them
because U the one woman Maria from that
part of the city starts a workers
Revolution against um the guys
above in answer to this frazen uh
reaches out to an inventor who has built
a robot
you can see it here in the film it's
called the Machin and mench like the
machine human and it gets further
modified um the inventor captures Maria
and then forms the robot In Her Image
which is then used uh to subvert the
worker's Uprising and again we have here
the Trope of a masculine inventor using
a feminine creation to execute his will
at the same time um coming back to um
technology I think this this is a
switchboard and these are switchboard
operators at this time the telephone uh
was in not invented but then really got
getting into use and um I think this is
important or concerning this talk
because I can imagine this being the
first time when uh you use a machine and
it speaks back to you in a feminine
voice then of course we could asking yet
why do we have uh mostly women in this
switchboard
positions one reason is um like in the
telegraph system that was um important
during the war most men at that time
were um being out at the front fighting
and then these positions that got more
empty in communication Telegraph and uh
telephone systems were then then um
filled up with
women after the war this really didn't
change I heard uh from people that this
was because of the signal processing
that um because of the noise on the on
the wires you would understand and
discern higher pitched voices more
easily than lower pitched
voices I think that's uh an that sounds
like a good story but I didn't find
sources for that and I also think that
there are other reasons that are more
probable one rather important one is
that you could pay a female um
switchboard operator a half to a quarter
of the salary of a
man and of course they will
also perceived as being more hospitable
uh more polite and more Ser serving to
the
customers now getting closer to voice
synthesis this is the 1939 presentation
of the voter this is a very early speech
synthesis device that was developed by
Bell
labs and it's interesting because here
we have um not the mechanical generation
of sound that we had before in the
euphonia device but here we have a one
that is powered by two oscillators which
then modulate the signal that um sounds
more um or which which sounds the most
close uh to what how human speech sounds
like but this still again uh was
operated had needed operation by someone
you had a kind of keyboard um that uh
you had to press and learn how to
control to
exactly modify the signal that was
generated to have the speech that you
want exle
give me your answer
to I have
crazy all for the love of
you it won't be a stylish
marage I can't afford a
carriage but you look sweet up on a SE
bicycle made for
two
is SM sound
familiar my instructor was Mr
Langley and he taught me to sing a
song if you'd like to hear
it I can sing it for
you yes I like to
hear take it for
it's called
Daisy
Daisy give me your answer
to
[Music]
gra
you
I hope that was
discernible so why do I bring up this
example when I wanted to talk about
feminine machines the thing about the vo
in the
50s Arthur C Clark visited Bell labs and
he encountered just that speech
synthesizer that could sing that way and
he was so impressed by this that he uh
took inspiration from it and as you've
seen took uh the song that could be sung
by the Vo
and um implemented it in the script for
Hall
9000 that you would say Okay HAL 9000
also sounds pretty masculine why is this
important for this I would argue um this
plays a role because h000 was one of the
earliest and very um present speech
synthesizers or speech synthesis systems
um that was in the public of course not
in use but uh in the popular movie 2001
Space Odyssey uh that was I think came
out
1969 and I can imagine that um
developers that later wanted to develop
speech synthesis system tried to avoid
masculine sounding voices computerized
voices to avert an association with the
character of Hall 9000 which is the
antagonist of this
story I think this is uh one of the
points that really got me um um excited
in the research for this because here we
have technological
innovation having an impact on how
science fiction portrays machines and
we'll have that later again but the
other way
around coming to contemporary science
fiction I could talk a lot about
feminine machine characters in science
fiction and
movies but I'm sorry that will be a
whole mouthful I could do a whole own
talk about this so I'd rather um stay
with two examples that are more relevant
for this topic one of them latest uh
published movie is called
exina where we have this Balan and Gala
setting overall again we have Nathan CEO
of big Temp Tech company Big Data Big
Boss whatever who um sits in his bunker
home somewhere in Norway um only
reachable by
helicopter and is working on his own
sensient
machines uh spoiler sorry he has not
only one but he has multiple and oh what
an
surprise they look pretty curvy and
feminine I would argue and then he um
invites one of his top uh programmers
that's
cab um
to have him exec a touring test on Ava
that's her
name of course this is not really a
touring test because he knows beforehand
that she's a machine and what this is
really about but okay the touring test
is also about
deception Ava's actual purpose is uh to
execute um Nathan's experiment to look
if she can manipulate cab into helping
her escape from this facility facility
in which um they're in and oops that
actually happens and she stabs her
Creator and she leaves KET behind to die
and is free to the
World on the other hand side maybe uh a
bit contrasting narrative is um Spike
Jones film
her where we have um the
protagonist here ducky that was your
your part what was his name Theodore
thanks ducky yes
protagonist Theodore who uh works for an
internet company ghost writing personal
handwritten letters for others um but is
rather unhappy with his own life he was
married is in divorced but he's really
not ready for it and then he downloads a
new operating system onto his
devices which um has its own personality
which is is a conscious Ai and starts
talking to him and what is bit different
from the other films maybe um is that
it's not the editors which simply
suppose uh which gender this machine has
but he or the character is able to
choose in the beginning he's asked would
you like your OS to be female or ma or
male he said yeah I'd like her to be
female her name is Samantha and then
they go on um developing a
relationship um growing on each other
and learning from each other and I think
where this is
um different from the other movies is
that um Samantha which is the name of
the US then develops she develops a will
of his own her own needs and decides to
depart from the
relationship now speaking of uh virtual
assistance looking at what we have today
and how um the virtual assistens we have
are car characterized um here's one
example from the virtual assistant
Microsoft has made uh it's called
Cortana and it's not called that for by
accident but they were let's say
inspired by a video a video game
character this is Cortana from the Halo
video game series in that series she is
also like personal AI assistant to uh
the main protagonist Master
Chief and here we find that phenomenon
um that we had before with B labs and
Arthur C Clark just the other way around
here um technology companies who develop
these devices are inspired by what is um
has already been done and developed in
science
fiction now so far I've always talked
about how these voices are feminine or
that these machines are
female this is something I have to say
um about this
going after Judith Butler gender is
performative and so none of these voices
or devices are inherently female of any
kind but what they do is they perform a
certain kind of femininity and I also
want to stress that there's not one
femininity but it's there's a huge range
of femininities that can be performed
and these devices are designed to rather
narrow space of femininity
how is that executed or how is this
designed in different virtual
Assistance or that's I think that
question was later on ducky did you did
you mess with the
slid said I just forgot that thank
you why would a designer choose a
feminine voice over a masculine voice
for such an assistant
I've uh been digging and I've found a
study by um former professor of
communication Clifford nass who has um
done some work with um voice interaction
or voice um as a medium to interact with
machines and computers who found that
people tend to perceive female voices as
helping us to solve our problems by
ourselves while they view male voices as
authority figures who tell us the
answers to our problems
I don't believe that this is anything
inherent in male or female voices but of
course this reflects um gender
stereotypes that we have in our
society adding to that not only this
let's say Market re research Factor
comes into it but I think it's important
to consider where these devices are used
and which expectations arise from that
usage my mother recently told me that
she got a Google home uh for her
apartment for what because she wanted to
regulate the
heating um a friend of mine has an
Amazon Alexa at home and what does he
use that for he us it he uses it to
switch on the kitchen ventilation so he
doesn't have to stand up or switch on
the lights uh or switch off the lights
at
night um another assistant which you
might not have heard about is Shia ice
this is something like the um newcomer
after um Microsoft's T um Shia ice is
also a conversational bot mostly used in
China or it's very popular in China at
least where people interact with it
day-to-day just as they would interact
with a friend sending pictures um asking
what's up and just having little
chitchat and um what I've seen in
multiple
advertisements for virtual assistants of
people who just um tell their device
like hey make me an appointment next
week or send a message to my boss an
email and I would subsume this under
secretary work and all of these domains
like domestic tasks giving advice
listening doing secretary work all of
this is work that we usually associate
with work that women do
that's why I can understand that this
might be an easy choice for a designer
who thinks okay people would expect in
such an at work Environ such an
environment that women do this work so
I'll design my um device with a female
voice but it's not only adding to this
performance of femininity is not only
like the usage the naming and the design
of the voice as such but it's also the
interaction
patterns when you ask Siri are you a
woman Siri says I do not have a gender
like cacti or certain species of
fish other questions in the same
direction is if we ask Siri that she
might tell us more about herself or who
she actually is and she's evading
evading and
deflecting and this reminds me of a sort
of vintage femininity of not making
yourself seen of of not being any
disturbance just being there serving
your function but not actually talking
about yourself and being present as
yourself I understand why this design
decision is made because of course these
devices the are Services they are not
personal alties they just try to pretend
to be
personalities and that's why in their
speech behavior of course when it comes
to themselves it comes to themselves
they'll try deflecting and trying asking
about other things what they can do for
the consumer or the
user but it's not only the behavior of
um the device as such but I also think
that the user Behavior says something
about how we gender these
devices I did a little search on um the
video portal of my least mistrust um
looking because I've seen that people
like to flirt with Siri and um or I
don't know what you would call it if I
would really call it flirting
maybe starting out flirting being more
creepy getting more
harassing and from the these
answers they unsettle me because I think
yes this is how you would react if you
want to further engage in that
conversation because this device on is
designed to stay servicable um to be at
hand always be
listening but it's also a Rea a pattern
of communication that I see in um myself
when uh people try to harass me harass
me and
also that is encoded into um a gender
role of femininity of not trying to be
aggressive not trying to um set someone
back just trying to deflect and kind of
very softly gently politely wiggle
myself out of the out of the situation
but I don't think that this is a way
that you can avert harassment silence
won't protect you
but
that something like that I think is also
um can also be seen in the um case of
Tay the Twitter bot for mention that was
developed by Microsoft that was Tay was
supposed to be like a public Twitter bot
that you could train with your own
conversations and then people on message
boards decided hey let's let's mess with
her head uh and trained her to say
um sexist
uh racist homophobic
things of course this is only
speculation because Tay was taken pretty
taken down pretty
quickly but I wonder if uh this would
have happened if it was not tay but
maybe
[Music]
Taylor I think um this quote from jacen
feltman who is a new york-based writer
and journalist
who also wrote a terrific article on um
conversational Bots this quote sums it
up pretty neatly by creating
interactions that encourage consumers to
understand the objects that serve them
as women technologists abet the
Prejudice by which women are considered
objects after all it must speak
agreeably it must not disclose opinions
or biographical information as it has
none it must always answer and the
answers must
Delight
well I've um been to u a lot of places
that I find critical because
um
identifying um the subservient and the
obedient that these machines that we use
as instruments for ourselves
display connecting that to the feminine
for me is a
bit
challenging I have difficulties with
that because it perpetuates a notion of
um to uh that femin feminine things or
people are object
objectified
already but aside um next to those
critical points of course I think um
speech synthesizers and speech
interfaces can have really good uses
I mean here we have stepen Hawking who
of course was not only visible in the
public as someone who has a speech
synthesizer to communicate but of course
also a researcher and a um popular a
popular science writer and much much
later of course he then is
someone who is um displayed in the
public and is uh able to communicate and
have a voice because of these
Technologies another project that I
found online is this one it's called
cyber
galaki um and it's a group of
programmers and artists who try to
resurrect uh a Georgian poet and writer
on the basis of his interviews of his
books I think this could be a very
interesting um way for education to
interact and get to know more about
people from the
past um I haven't talked about Eliza so
far but I think also uh this um
belongs in here Eliza to those who don't
know was um a chat bot that was built by
y fights and B and um it was like a
therap therapeutic chatbot who uh would
um mirror to you what you uh you said
yourself like if I said yeah I said know
I just came back from work I had a hard
day and had an argument with you with my
boss and then the program would respond
your boss
and it would just would let the user
keep talking and talking about yourself
and then coming to
introspection after viten bom wrote this
thing actually he wrote this thing to
show people that
um um machine devices could never live
up live up to some a person with
presence he then found a secretary
talking to Eliza about troubles with her
boyfriend um and although I would agree
with him
that I think it's the wrong um it's
dangerous to assert responsibility to um
machine agent I do think that uh devices
like Eliza could help with introspection
when I'm conscious of um the fact that
this thing I'm interacting with is not a
present um listening other but more like
a mirror which helps me to introspect
myself and of course um in cards
navigational systems are a really handy
thing when I have to get um put my eye
somewhere else then um it's neat to have
a voice to interact with me to give me
information where to go um on and where
might be dangerous on the road
ahead
[Music]
yet my criticism for this is I don't
think we should design Just For What the
market wants if we do this we create a
self filling prophecy if we believe
people like feminine voices more then of
course they will be subjected to mostly
feminine voices and then of course they
know that they're um get Habit
habituated to that and then they like
that more but they never um get the
opportunity to um experience a greater
diversity as again example of Eliza I
also think it's important to not take
responsibility away from the user ERS
yes a feminine voice might be something
that is more trustworthy but do I want
to be more trustworthy in a device that
sits in my home and listens to
everything I say um collecting data for
people who uh maybe just want to um have
better marketing for me or who want to
know if I'm a suspect or who just give
it right away to the
NSA I don't think that voice synthesis
Technologies should compromise my me
media literacy
coming back to um the example with Tay
or with the way that um people might
flirtatiously harass other
conversational thoughts we teach
children not to be cruel to animals of
course also because we care for animal
well-being but also because we don't
want children to be habituated to being
cruel towards animals which then made
also bleed over to being Cru towards
humans especially when Bots are mostly
feminine I think this applies just the
same
way and when I imagine of course with
the internet of things may maybe more
and more devices will be uh able will be
able to control uh via voice maybe my
toothbrush uh my mirror my fridge my
car and I feel uneasy when I imagine
that I re about this uh realm of mine
with all my femin and devices that are
obedient to me and that serve
me I don't think that helps to
um get away this the ever so the already
present object objectification of the
feminine and I also believe that in um
total the voices that we hear now or in
the devices that we use should also
display the diers University of the
world thank
[Music]
you for that um maybe if you can take
something from this talk I want to give
a shout out to a matzilla project called
common voice uh where they're building
add open source uh Speech synthesis and
um control um like speaking devices and
also listening devices um that are uh
have broader diversity that speak in
more broader voices or and also are
trained to a bigger database so more
people can also interact with these
devices and here you can donate your
voice to contribute to that um
database
yeah let's do that no thank you po was
really fine to
here uh I'm wondering if we have some
yeah take something to drink if we have
questions from the audience here someone
uh yes I see some people microphone too
please can
you hi I've got a very quick question
about sort of the idea of emotional
labor and feminism how it plays into
this because this been some studies on
how people are using increasingly tools
such as Siri for for example emotional
support to talk to them when they having
a bad time Etc and some recent feminist
research has shown that sort of men
vastly over rely on women for emotional
labor rather than men so do you think
that this a notable difference in the
degree to which for example people would
overuse Siri when Siri has a feminine
voice for emotional labor versus Siri
with her masculine voice for emotional
labor as with Eliza I think I see the
possibility in these devices to help
with
introspection but I think it's as
important to reach out to your
surrounding um to have a sense of trust
and building because giving or doing
emotional labor for each other of course
also um enhances uh your relationship uh
with the people around you with your
friends or your partner
is did that answer your
question B thanks is
it I just wanted to sry if I can just do
a very quick follow-up what I just found
very interesting is that do you know of
maybe any research that has been done on
whether or not people are using Bots
with male and female personalities
different for emotional support like do
you know if there's been any research
done on whether or not people talk
differently to for example female Siri
or feminine Siri and masculin here about
emotional
issues I don't know but that would be a
really interesting research question
thank you I have to dive deeper into
that I think and microphone one there is
a question yeah okay um do you want to
comment on the one uh part where
computer voices are often male and of an
authority figure and that is um in U
aircraft autopilots they tell you to
pull up on a bad day and that is a male
voice I want to to know that uh and
therefore like it's it's an authority
fig it is
male okay yeah thank you for that
addition who of you has tools that that
he or she or in Swedish there is a word
for the hen hen indeed for the undefined
who of you has a a tool or a machine or
a device or as a
character I have some things none of you
I'm I'm the only one one is there there
is another one there another one and the
others say just see this as things then
right I hope your Zen because then you
see as well the value of it as Earth
provides us okay microphone
Tre so first I want to say thank you
very much for your talk I think it was
one of the best ones I hear on the whole
week
um I wanted to ask um if you can say
something about like usually which um
population or which group of people can
afford um speech devices and how this
may interact with that this is a female
kind of service like for example we have
pictures of really smart home which are
like for really rich people which are
usually white and male and this is
connected then to your smart home with
always the female
voice yeah maybe if you know something
about that or can comment on
that I would say of course um like
income and wealth is a factor if you get
such a device or not um I know of a
project where they wanted to outfit um
like a home for the Elderly with more
smart home devices but I guess of course
these are more pricey so also might be
um uh or more the wealthier population
that can access
that
otherwise also as as before would be an
interesting research question to look
into that I don't know more about
this uh someone on the Internet is life
out there it seems is it a male female
or so hello question for from internet
so they choose a female voice in the
fighter jets because the pilot was
statistically more likely to listen and
save the aircraft and his life and the
question is uh what is your take on that
do you understand question I hope so so
uh my question I can add this uh there
is actually voice called the beaching
Betty if I know about it pardon it one
more time the Beaching
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oh the there's actually the study based
on the military research for
75 okay let's let's answer the first
question so what do I think about Pilots
rather not crashing planes that have
female voices did I get it
correctly okay um
well it's not like my car r Ruby is my
car but
yeah I could imagine that maybe
a general plays into that that men try
to be more do try to prove their
dominance to other men and maybe if they
project a male gender onto that plane
they'll try to um like uh Master it up
and and try to prove it to the plane and
maybe then they're not really that
concentrating on getting the landing
right just a thesis and if they hear
like this soothing female voice like
that is so so common in in these devices
they might think like oh I have a
responsibility for me and also the
others so I'd rather not get angry or
frustrated and just get this [ __ ] done I
don't know it's aggression there is is
it uh the interaction with your plane is
is that as well female there then in in
that
case I don't think there are like speech
or conversational devices on planes but
I know that in eer emergency situations
there is a voice uh to try to capture
the
um and istion of and that's female seems
so uh if I understand correctly
different some are female some are
male female airlin male okay uh someone
in the audience said that uh it's
different in some Airlines it's um
rather feminine or other airlines it's
male uh microphone too we have an answer
I suppose uh it's anecdotal from my
point of view I've heard in the Vietnam
uh during the Vietnam war the Americans
tested uh to the ways of grapping the
attention if some were if there occurred
some malfunctions and uh anecdotally
they used uh female voices and even the
voices of the children of the pilots if
they had any uh manula dad give my
attention and after that they could
share your right to motor Ador or
something P anecdotal uh I was somewhat
ex uh expecting you to touch that and uh
while I'm at it Conrad Lawrence had some
studies way back in the 50s I think
about attention and I think that would
be uh interesting to take his point
of categorizing categorizing the
attention mechanisms into your studies
as well thank
you something to look up uh a microphone
Tre please
thank you for your talk uh it was very
relevant and very very good I liked it
uh in your talk you didn't mention
anything about Marshall mclan so I don't
know if you know about him but he's uh
yes he's a media theorist yes yes so one
of his points is that uh any medium
amplifies or accelerates existing human
processes and in your examples you you
you made a lot of good examples about
um the gender dimorphism in our culture
throughout history uh so my question is
maybe what sorry another another point
of mclan is that the medium itself is
more important than the the content so
here I would definitely be using voice
Milla but that that seems to be about
the changing the content and not
changing the
media m I I wouldn't um necessarily say
this of course there are different ways
that you can synthesize speech and um
the voices that are mostly used in these
devices uh have a certain fundamental
frequency that is uh higher pitched or
also have certain speech patterns I
think tinkering around with that and
experimenting to get more diversity
there is um would change a part of the
medium or the format and not the
content do you have uh any ideas for
other types of media that we might
explore instead of this uh Voice
assistance I would say uh robotics uh is
certainly also something that is subject
to that um when looking into it I saw a
lot also like fem Bots or robots that
try to perform a certain femininity and
also there I think why do we need this
of course people design them like that
because they want to use it in in the
care area and in care work but
I think tackling this um on on different
levels is not only um a good way to go
at pre um prejudices about femininity
and the female but also around
masculinity of course also um when we
have we could also use male voices uh in
more devices to perpetuate that yes also
man can be trusted can be helpful can be
polite I would suggest that we actually
do something a test here with the
elevators for instance uh in this
building and change the voice and then
do a kind of inquiry about it isn't it
put some children voice in it and scream
like no no not to number two or
whatever be you know to just a test
microphone one please let's yes I was I
was wondering whether it might also be
something maternal so from my oppression
I know some people that seem to be
looking lifelong for the caring mother
that tells them what to do and that
somehow also I think this is not only
for men but also for some women so um
could it be also a maternal thing
that these voices are
freemale
um I guess I lack uh the background in
Psychology to to really answer that um I
would just like uh give me prare for my
own general knowledge which might not be
uh the best basis for that okay but also
a good question maybe to look into
that thank you right we go to microphone
to hey thanks for the talk it was really
good um I was wondering since you
researched on on the subject and you
kind of gave it as a
concluding uh thing in your talk
um what would be a way that we then
really diversify those um I mean speech
synthesizers and voices that we talk to
could we imagine Bots taking shifts and
sometimes you talk to a I don't know a
man voice and sometimes it's a female
voice St and you or should we rely on
bibs and blobs rather than actual uh
Speech synthesizer talking back to you
do you have any like Insight on this I
think the first uh
um I would the first answer I would give
to that is I think in the beginning um a
Consciousness about this is important to
realize oh okay there's so many like
devices that speak feminine to me uh and
that that might is perpetuating the idea
or the notion that femininity is um
objectified and that these two belong
together I think this is a starting
point uh and
as I said the Milla project uh is
something that I would look forward to
to
uh
get my voice um because I think that's a
good way like have a more diverse uh
training set or for maybe the some voice
synthesis is done with neural networks
um so that that train on that and then
maybe of course trying to uh get this
into
public yeah let's uh raise that number
maybe today if we have the chance uh
number three please three um what do you
think about neutral
voices totally
doable if if
uh um I don't believe that we have to
rely on this binary I think we already
acknowledge that people do not fit in
that binary why should our machines do
that but usually the female voices are
very stereotype female so if you take a
voice where you you cannot define
whether it's like a very female or very
male voice because there's some people
where you you hear the voice and if you
don't see the person you cannot tell
immediately what it if it's a male or a
female person so why not just do it with
the voices and then you don't even have
to think about whether it's male or
female I believe because at least
speaking for me because of the way that
I was raised the socialization I got um
um I
um get
uh when I see people the first impulse I
have is try to is it a man is it a woman
and then I realized like hey maybe that
person just doesn't care and I think
that was learning process for me and I
think the same also happens with voices
that in the beginning when we hear them
for the first time we're like is it is
it female is it male but I think through
um spreading a Consciousness about this
that this this reflects uh also gender
stereotypes we have in our society um
people might get more um open to this
and more used to
this does it answer your
question
yes but I think why not use this moment
now to make the world more open and then
also put it back in the normal world
where people don't have to think about
like gender too much
maybe now it's the time when you can
just do it with those voices people get
used to it and then they it's not the
big issue anymore if it's a male or
female in
general but thank you that's that's a a
good approach let's do that yeah number
two hello nice talk and uh I think I
would I like to brought up is maybe we
like female voices because they are high
and we are programmed to really give our
attention to female to high pitched
voices because children have mostly high
pitched voices and we are programmed
to care for them for example cats also
Meow in uh
High um higher pitch higher pitches to
get our attention and maybe that's the
reason why we
really want to hear something like
that I don't know how about you but I'm
not programmed like I have a a brain
made of um uh biological neurons um I
also thought about that that this might
be something that uh gets attention but
on the other side um also people that um
come perform a certain Authority also
get
attention so I think yeah that might be
a point but I don't think um it can U it
equalizes the other effects for example
that we associate a lower pitch with a
more author Authority performing
voice we can have one last question sir
a very short question do you did you
find any counter examples any cruel
proactive female voices on autom and
culture could you pardon did did you
find any counter examples of the thesis
uh by um some female autom of autometer
with female voices which act in a cruel
and proactive way in some cultural
artifacts I'm I think about like Ghost
in the Shell major kusanagi I think
she's pretty cool and and going for
herself but well she's not like a voice
um synthesizer but what I found is in
like one of the those rather creepy
videos of people um flirting with Siri I
found one example where Siri then just
responded after being um um harassed all
the time like okay that's it I'm uh
going to the digital agents Union and
Reporting your harassment I was like yes
which engineer put this in I want more
of
that Polaris thank you I would would
love to uh actually I would love to do a
call to change the voices in the
elevators here and really to have a test
next year would be really fun man thank
you for your fantastic talk I'm really
looking forward to whatever we're going
to do with it uh thank you audience as
well give a warm Applause as well to
polares thank
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you
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oh