Isn't interesting that before #AI could code, assistants were always gendered #female (Siri, Alexa, etc.) As soon as AI became able to code, it got #male or non-gendered names (Claude, Chat GPT). I'm not saying explicitly gendering assistants as female was a good thing. I'm saying it's interesting that the trigger for tech/society in general to stop doing that was when the AI became able to write programs. It really does say something unflattering about our assumptions and worldview.
@fastfinge I htink there might be something there, but at the same time no matter how these things are done someone will see something in it. For example I remember someone commenting Dawkins wanted to call his instance of Claude Claudia instead, and saw it as a form of sexism. But that's more or less the opposite to your point.
Out of curiosity do you think of AI assistants as having a gender? I generally don't. Though I'm used to male synthetic voices.
@modulux I also wonder how much of this is because of the way English uses pronouns. Like in French (and I think Spanish?) random words like table, kitchen, or radio have a random gender associated with them. In English, we don't do that with the vast majority of non-living things. So when we do it (for ships, computers, cars, and now AI) it feels deeply meaningful somehow, when maybe it's actually not.
@fastfinge That makes me wonder what people with ungendered languages do about things like this, such as Indonesian or Finnish (no he/she distinction).
