Fiction helps us imagine the future of AI and the impact that it will have on our lives. But it also perpetuatesstereotypes forgenerations to come.

From Greek mythology to contemporary sci-fi,robots are constantly anthropomorphized. The female androids are typically portrayed as beautiful, subservient, and sexually passive or deceitful killers on the rampage. Warrior machines, meanwhile, are normally gendered male, whether theyre protecting humans like Robocop, or trying to wipe them out like the Terminator.

These stereotypes endure long after the story ends. They help foster Silicon Valleystech-bro culture and the productsthat it creates.

[Read:Microsofts AI editor uses photo of wrong mixed-race popstar in story about racism]

Take the tendency to give voice assistants female voices and names. Weve been conditionedto prefer synthesized female voices as they sound warmer. Once that prejudice is embedded in the tech, its sustained by our interactions with it.

As AI researcherKanta Dihal noted at the CogX conference this week:

Because people get used to a feminine, servile Alexa, theyll continue to associate women with servile roles. And these roles relate not only to jobs, such as the servant in the case of women,or the soldier in the case of men, but also to social roles and roles within relationships and hierarchies.

Its not only stereotypes of gender that fiction reinforces. The realexperiences of people of color have also been sidelined or sublimated.

In Dihalsresearch on depictions ofintelligent machines, shes uncovered misleadingallegories of slavery in stories of AI rebelling against humans:

Those narratives also in a way perform a dehumanizing function. Because by drawing on existing narratives of black slaves and transposing them onto narratives of robots that are very often racialized as white, this is a way of reappropriating a literary history and erasing these black voices from that non-fictional history.

Excluding BAME, trans, and female voices from these stories help sustainbiases intech. But we can still challenge these narratives,by diverting attention from tech bro fantasies towards marginalized voices. FromNnedi Okorafosvision of childbirth in a future Nigeria toCassandra Rose Clarkstale of a girls love affair with an android, there are already plenty of alternatives to try.

But the first step towards promoting diverse perspectives in fiction is acknowledging the homogeneity of theWestern canon. As Dihals colleague Kate Devlin put it:

If you examine the narratives, then you have a chance of disrupting the narratives.

Published June 10, 2020 18:18 UTC

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Sci-fi perpetuates a misogynistic view of AI Heres how we can fight it - The Next Web