Why Do Nearly All Digital Assistants Have Women's Voices and Names?
The Polyester Podcast
The Polyester Podcast
4.5 • 533 Ratings
🗓️ 8 August 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant have in common? They're all girlies! This week Ione and Halima are exploring gender in the world of technology and artificial intelligence. Is the fact all of our 'virtual assistants' women sexist? Does it reinforce backdated gender roles? Or are we other thinking it? Ione and Halima break it down, looking at the research and history of female voices in the virtual world.
Order Ione's book, Poor Little Sick Girls, here!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, Halima. |
| 0:01.2 | Hi, Ioni. |
| 0:02.2 | And hello to the listeners. |
| 0:03.8 | Welcome to the Polyester podcast. |
| 0:23.4 | I'm Ayoni and I'm the founding editor-in-chief of Polyester and I'm the author of Poor Little Sick Girls, which is available now. And I'm Helima, the community editor of Polyester Seed and the co-coast of the Poliator podcast. This is the Sleepover Club, a feminist pop culture podcast. we pull apart the hashtag discourse in the hope of making some sense of it all. |
| 0:23.4 | Before we get started, please like... This is the Sleep Paper Club, a feminist pop culture podcast. We pull apart the hashtag discourse in the hope of making some sense of it all. |
| 0:27.7 | Before we get started, please like, rate and review. So you have any reviews throughout the Sikai'ami? |
| 0:34.9 | We do! This is one of my favourite ones of recent times. The podcast, I didn't know I needed five stars. |
| 0:40.2 | Ioni and Halima, you are my new favourite podcasting duo, Dolly and Pandora, who? |
| 0:45.9 | I wish I'd listen sooner, although very happy that I have your extensive back catalogue to peruse at my leisure, |
| 0:48.9 | mostly when doing household chores down the patriarchy. |
| 0:50.5 | Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. |
| 0:55.9 | Also, if you love the podcast, by Poor Little Sit Girls, it's so good. That was by Gracie Bates from the UK. So thank you very much, Gracie. I also noticed that Gracie reviewed my |
| 1:02.0 | book, Legend Icon. Like I think she reviewed it on Good Breeds as well, saying it. So thank you |
| 1:07.7 | very much. I appreciate it a lot. Fab. Thanks Gracie. |
| 1:12.3 | What are we doing today, Halima? |
| 1:17.8 | We're talking about artificial intelligence because we are women in STEM. |
| 1:20.5 | I used to want to be women in STEM so badly. |
| 1:23.8 | What the fuck? What did you want to do instead? |
| 1:26.3 | Nothing. Like I remember when I was at uni, |
| 1:27.5 | the movies had like these history courses that were like science-based, like the history of like something scientific. And I |
| 1:31.1 | wanted to do them because I was like, I kind of want to be like a woman in STEM. Like, |
... |
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