It's Time to Talk About How Siri is Reinforcing Gender Stereotypes

While supercomputer engineers are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the field of computational intelligence, they may also be reinforcing outdated gender norms through the anthropomorphism of their creations. Although they may be driving technological progress, this could be at the expense of socio-cultural progression. Most pertinent is the fact that the world's top supercomputer, IBM Watson, has a man's name and voice while nearly all virtual assistants have female names and voices -- Siri, Alexa, Cortanae. This has most frequently been attributed to a marketing strategy. Jason Mars, CEO of Clinc financial software, told the New York Times that he gave his artificial intelligence (AI) assistant a "helpful, young Caucasian female" voice because, in order to be successful commercially, "there's a kind of pressure to conform to the prejudices of the world."