So wait, let me get this straight here. What exactly don't you agree with? The idea that people push Cortana around because she is presented as a woman?
You think the problem merely stems from the fact that she is a program designed to serve, incapable of any sort of negative response
I think that any negative response–real or imagined–is irrelevant, as is any personification or anthropomorphization of the product. As it is not human, it is not to be afforded human rights. As it is a machine, it is explicitly supposed to behave as a machine should. My interest in the concept is piqued, though. If I don’t feel it’s too much a pain, maybe I’ll temporarily remove my blocks on Windows 10’s telemetry and test out Cortana’s responses to this sort of thing...
“Females” are often picked as assistance because they’re assumed to be more caring, trusting, etc. However, my mother just informed me that she switched Siri from American female to British male because “she was getting snotty with me.” For the life of me, I couldn’t get her to properly explain what that was supposed to mean, nor could I reproduce such a conversational tone from my own Siri. Maybe that was just because I was chuckling the whole time. I guess I’ll have to take a look at her iPad next I see her...
Now like I said before, I wholeheartedly agree with you on certain points. Cortana is not human and does not have rights. Cortana is a piece of software designed to serve information at request. But the way I see it, and the way I believe Microsoft sees it, is that personifying her as a woman brings along a certain attitude from the user. Now granted, give a human any such machine and they will abuse it somehow, like the fateful Tay, but Microsoft believes that Cortana is a proxy to a much larger issue of sexism and they're trying to work on pushing that back by having her stand up for herself
Now, it seems from your earlier comments that you don't seem to see this type of sexism as a problem, or even that sexism is the problem, and I'm not trying to tell you what to believe. I'm just trying to say what I think. Microsoft is thinking, and you can take that however you will (p.s. I hope this doesn't come off as snarky. I'm really trying to be civil )
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“Females” are often picked as assistance because they’re assumed to be more caring, trusting, etc. However, my mother just informed me that she switched Siri from American female to British male because “she was getting snotty with me.” For the life of me, I couldn’t get her to properly explain what that was supposed to mean, nor could I reproduce such a conversational tone from my own Siri. Maybe that was just because I was chuckling the whole time. I guess I’ll have to take a look at her iPad next I see her...
Now like I said before, I wholeheartedly agree with you on certain points. Cortana is not human and does not have rights. Cortana is a piece of software designed to serve information at request. But the way I see it, and the way I believe Microsoft sees it, is that personifying her as a woman brings along a certain attitude from the user. Now granted, give a human any such machine and they will abuse it somehow, like the fateful Tay, but Microsoft believes that Cortana is a proxy to a much larger issue of sexism and they're trying to work on pushing that back by having her stand up for herself
Now, it seems from your earlier comments that you don't seem to see this type of sexism as a problem, or even that sexism is the problem, and I'm not trying to tell you what to believe. I'm just trying to say what I think. Microsoft is thinking, and you can take that however you will
(p.s. I hope this doesn't come off as snarky. I'm really trying to be civil