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0 pointsmonksy7y ago0 comments

> stereotypes that many have fought hard to progress

What stereotypes would this help to alleviate?

> the technology we create should follow.

Why it's a service that communications via artificial audio. Why is it important that you can't have a male or a female voice? People still exist, the voices in question don't have a physical appearance.

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jolmg7y ago· 4 in thread

> What stereotypes would this help to alleviate?

Though I don't feel strongly either way, my guess is that, since people usually leave software on defaults and female voices are typically chosen for voice assistants, the stereotype might be of women being servants.

diss7y ago

That seems to me like a far reaching problem to solve. I don't believe anyone actually thinks like that, I think this hypothetical issue exists in the minds of people trying to solve it.

jolmg7y ago

> I don't believe anyone actually thinks like that

You'd be surprised. The world is vast and gender roles are traditional in many cultures.

claudiawerner7y ago

I'd say there's a big difference between someone consciously thinking in a certain way, and building associations, many of which they don't notice. In fact, it's been one of the principal aims of psychology, sociology and economics to uncover how people act on such opinions without knowing they actually hold them.

"Female voices do however appear to have an advantage in that they can portray a greater range of urgencies because of their usually higher pitch and pitch range. An experiment is reported showing that knowledge about the sex of a speaker has no effect on judgements of perceived urgency, with acoustic variables accounting for such differences."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14965452

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