

These biases also contribute to an outcome researchers call the “tightrope effect,” where women are expected to assume traditionally “feminine” qualities to be liked, but must simultaneously take on-and be penalized for-prescriptively “masculine” qualities, like assertiveness, to be promoted. These norms are especially harmful for non-binary individuals as they reinforce the notion that gender is a strict binary associated with certain traits. Even today, gender-related stereotypes shape normative expectations for women in the workplace there is significant academic research to indicate that helpfulness and altruism are perceived as feminine traits in the United States, while leadership and authority are associated with masculinity. Gender has historically led to significant economic and social disparities. While this phenomenon may somewhat vary by product type-people use smart speakers and smartphone assistants in different manners-their deployment is likely to accelerate in coming years. Voice assistants play a unique role in society as both technology and social interactions evolve, recent research suggests that users view them as somewhere between human and object. In addition, several studies indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the frequency with which voice assistant owners use their devices due to more time spent at home, prompting further integration with these products.

By some estimates, the number of voice assistants in use will triple from 2018 to 2023, reaching 8 billion devices globally. While the 2010s encapsulated the rise of the voice assistant, the 2020s are expected to feature more integration of voice-based AI. In conjunction with the consumer market, voice assistants have also broken into mainstream culture, exemplified by IBM’s Watson becoming a “Jeopardy!” champion or a fictional virtual assistant named Samantha starring as the romantic interest in Spike Jonze’s 2013 film “Her.” It wasn’t until the 2010s that modern, AI-enabled voice assistants reached the mass consumer market-beginning in 2011 with Apple’s Siri and followed by Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana, among others.
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In the 1990s, speech recognition products entered the consumer market with Dragon Dictate, a software program that transcribed spoken words into typed text. Two of the earliest voice-activated assistants, phone dialer Audrey and voice calculator Shoebox, could understand spoken numbers zero through nine and limited commands but could not verbally respond in turn. The field of speech robotics has undergone significant advancements since the 1950s. Background The history of AI bots and voice assistants public and private sectors to mitigate harmful gender portrayals in AI bots and voice assistants. We close by making recommendations for the U.S. In this report, we review the history of voice assistants, gender bias, the diversity of the tech workforce, and recent developments regarding gender portrayals in voice assistants. voice assistants present a practical example of how AI bots prompt fundamental criticisms about gender representation and how tech companies have addressed these challenges. Given their early adoption in the mass consumer market, U.S. Going forward, the need for clearer social and ethical standards regarding the depiction of gender in artificial bots will only increase as they become more numerous and technologically advanced. AI ethicist Josie Young recently said that “when we add a human name, face, or voice … it reflects the biases in the viewpoints of the teams that built it,” reflecting growing academic and civil commentary on this topic. Research Intern, Center for Technology Innovation - The Brookings InstitutionĪs artificial bots and voice assistants become more prevalent, it is crucial to evaluate how they depict and reinforce existing gender-job stereotypes and how the composition of their development teams affect these portrayals.
