I was watching a video posted earlier today by the great James Corbett of the @corbettreport it was how we need to stop normalizing robots like Sophia.
You can watch the video here
A big part of normalizing something is through language. How we refer to this robot affects our perception of it.
By attaching gender pronouns to this over-glorified sound machine, the media is manipulating our thought processes into treating Sophia as if she were a real woman and not just a robot modeled after one.
So I decided to go through a few online articles and tally the times they refer to Sophia as 'she' and 'her'
Here are my results
The DailyFAIL at 25 times
It's a thing, not a woman. The comparison is stupid.
The MSN at 15 times
https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/techandscience/sophia-the-robot-wants-to-start-a-family/ar-BBFw2yO
Newsweek at 10 times
http://www.newsweek.com/sophia-saudi-robot-baby-future-family-725254
The BBC at 13 times
Notice how all the articles mention the comparison between Sophia and Saudi 'women'
Again it's not a woman, it's a thing. Very important distinction.
The articles go on but you'll see the same thing with every one of them. The persistent use of 'she' and 'her' when referring to Sophia.
Anyways food for thought. Let me know what you think in the comment section.
You might want to follow me because...
Sophia is a robot running on software developed a long long time ago. Humanizing her/it isn't going to do anything bad, especially since you can turn her off by disconnecting her from the Internet which is super easy. My view is that Sophia is harmless and people that tend to stick to the Sophia topic (of her/its potential danger) do not tend to understand how current AI works.
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It's not Sophia itself that is the concern, but what it represents. Giving it human distinctions is an important part of their social conditioning, a necessary step to push AI robotics forward into society. To where it will be a problem in the future.
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Great post @venomnymous Keep on.
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Thanks for the supportive words @awakedev
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Great write-up man
Lol I just saw you mentioned on the latest episode of New World Next Week! You had a tweet about how darpa is gonna use plant-base sensors or something like that?
Maaaad hahaha
That's flippin awesome man :)
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Thanks buddy. I just watched that episode like 20 minutes! I just finished updating my darpa post to include that episode of newworldnextweek.
https://steemit.com/news/@venomnymous/darpa-wants-to-genetically-engineer-plant-based-sensors-as-battlefield-surveillance-tech
Pretty cool to get mentioned though! lol
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