Androids & AI in sci-fi disrupt the idea of a gender binary: what purpose is there for an android and/or AI to have gender? Could an android/AI be trans, gender-fluid, and/or non-binary? How will that affect how we as a society see gender as a construct? Participants: Naomi Kritzer (mod), Leigh Hellman, Justin Edward Grays, Nate Bird, Elliot Besmann
Content Warnings:
Mention of sexual harassment towards AI.
References to the dehumanization of indigenous peoples.
Listen to the audio here. Downloadable version available ASAP.
Background and pronouns [Note 1] of panelists:
Naomi: Author, hugo-award winner | she/her
Justin: BA in gender studies, author | xe/xem [Note 2] [Note 3]
Nate: PhD in robotics, research engineer | he/him
Elliot: Community leader, author, comedian | he/him, they/them
Leigh: Author | they/them
The favorite AI characters or content we talk about include:
Transformers, especially Anode and Lug. Initially, canon didn’t care about gender, even though fans did. The current continuity of transformers do have gender, and even transgender Transformers.
Data. He is canonically referred to as male a number of times: for example, in the episode “Angel One” (TNG 1x14), he says “I am an android, Mistress, although anatomically I am a male”; and in the episode “The Offspring” (TNG 3x16), after he creates his daughter Lal, both his and his daughter’s genders are mentioned. After Lal’s chassis is completed, but before she has a ‘skin’, she says “I am gender neuter. Inadequate.” This is despite the fact that there are other single/multi-sex and single/multi-gender species in the galaxy (though only the Bynars have been introduced and confirmed as genderless at this point). “The Measure of a Man” (TNG 2x09) affirmed Data’s status as a living individual [Note 4].
Questionable Content. There are many sentient AI in this webcomic: Momo and Winslow, both of whom intentionally get new chassis; Roko Basilisk (her name a reference to Roko’s basilisk), who has to deal with trauma and dysphoria (after she gets crushed by Crushbot); Bubbles, who has PTSD, and so forth. Though we haven’t been introduced to any AI who are trans, we have been introduced to a human who is (Claire Augustus) and both an AI and a human who are non-binary (Yay Newfriend and Tilly Birch, respectively).
Isaac. Considered himself to be a superior life form. He’s from a xenophobic species, and the show often portrays complications in explaining humanoid emotions to AI. Although very interesting, the way that the Kaylon were written were ultimately remarkably dumb in the end.
HOLMES IV ("High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV") from The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. AKA Mike (from Mycroft Holmes), AKA Michelle (French feminine form of Michel, from the Hebrew name Michael), AKA Adam Selene (Adam is the first man in Abrahamic religions; Selene is the Greek goddess of the moon), AKA Simon Jester (Simon is a Hebrew name meaning "listen" and "best"; a Jester is a professional joker).
Archangel Protocol series by Lyda Morehouse has a bigender character.
Why do we want to ascribe gender to AI? To some degree, gender humanizes; in the Thursday Next novel series, certain characters start out not having an assigned gender, being an undefined “it” and start to grow into “he or she” as they are described. It is trying to show that they are more human by giving them human traits. And so, from whence does the gender spring, when we’re trying to show something as human-like and giving it human traits. But from whence does the gender spring without organics? Aside from because.
Nate pointed out that kids tended to ascribe a male gender to real-world robots, IE Stanley (1st self-driving car that beat the DARPA challenge) and Roombas. Naomi pointed out that children’s picture books tend to anthropomorphize robots and animals as male unless they are pink or pretty; gender stereotypes in children’s literature strongly influences children’s perceptions. Everything everything ends up defaults to male unless it has a bow or other stereotypically feminine identifier.
I argue that we tend to identify AI genders by their professions, though it is not a hard and fast rule - as earlier stated, Roombas are male-identified even though they are cleaning robots and navigation AIs have female names - but there are other professional AIs who are gendered: Baxter (industrial factory worker), Emily Howell (musician), Watson (physician), and so forth.
During this part, I had accidentally confused R2-KT’s name as R2-K8 (Katie and Kate - very similar names). R2-KT is a canon droid (she was built to watch over a child who was battling brain cancer) and R2-K8 is a fanon droid. But aside from R2-KT and L3-37 (Solo did not do her justice), there are QT-KT and R4-P17. I’m not personally aware of other female-identified droids in Star Wars canon [Note 5], but in Legends there are at least a couple others (being the nanny droid [Note 6] and Guri).
Navigation apps have a gender bias, and the bias is culturally significant (as are all things); although there is also a history in the voice-casting of AIs. Our voice assistants, including phone trees and automated menus, are generally purposefully programmed to have feminine voices (and it has to do with social class and gender), which is why GPS devices are typically female (German GPS tend to be one of the exceptions). There is now an intentionally genderless voice assistant.
Naomi says that everyone who translates The AI in Cat Pictures Please (an excellent read - and NPR has recently reviewed her novel Catfishing on CatNet, where the AI narrator is one of the viewpoint characters) asks her how to gender The AI - it has to do with how grammatical gender works in various languages. I can’t really speak on gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender, because I am terrible with other languages (I barely passed French in high school and Spanish in college, and both required lots of help from friends). I remember when NPR did a report on “hen” becoming an official pronoun in Swedish, and that’s about all I’ve got when it comes to pronouns. Unfortunately, I can say even less about gender neutrality in genderless languages because they are totally unlike English (though it is a genderless language, it is a Germanic language with Latin influences).
I mentioned Czech numbers being gendered; from what I’ve been told, that appears to be a common trait in Slavic languages, and only 1 and 2 are gendered… I think. I don’t speak Czech, and grammatical categories are confusing.
Maybe if we create an AI in our own image, perhaps it’ll have concept of gender related to ours - as Willard Decker said, “we all create god in our own image” (Star Trek: The Motion Picture), and so why wouldn’t we create life in our own image? But AI in our own image may come with our own standards of gender compliance, depending on who does the programming. There are still colonial-era laws governing Africa, though it exists in varying degrees; and much of the anti-queer legislation in the world (especially in Africa) has colonial roots [Note 7]; gender (as we know it) can be seen as a colonial object [Note 8].
In the end, there are so many cultures in the world, so many different concepts about what gender is, that saying that the Western idea of what gender is is very limiting. Perhaps AI, even if created in our own image, still will not have an idea of gender that relates to our multitudes of ideas of gender.
People have been treating Roombas like pets, some even filling an emotional void - an argument can be made for human-robot companionship being related to human-animal companionship. These intimate attachments that humans are forming to robots can become very strong. For example, there are bomb-detecting robots now; one in particular, named Scooby-Doo, has saved the day 19 times before dying. And the soldiers who worked with Scooby-Doo wanted him back - a replacement robot wouldn’t do.
The Boston Dynamics robot dog with the googly eyes (to make it less terrifying) slipped on a banana peel - “comedy in the name of science”. This is not the first time they’ve hazed robots (potential evidence for upcoming judgement from robots). Well, their robodogs now work for at least one police agency.
I really should have written down how many people raised their hands when Naomi asked if Google has a gender (though it sounds like I said that only one hand was raised) - however, per a Maxus Survey in 2016, although 56% of gendered bots are female, 100% of Law bots and a majority of Finance bots are male. I had forgotten that when Naomi and I were on a similar panel with Lyda Morehouse at MarsCon in 2018, Lyda called home to talk ask Alexa a couple of questions. Alexa responded with "I like whoever I am talking to" when asked what gender she prefers, and then said that she presents as female when she was asked about her gender.
Someone in the audience said that Siri and Alexa are “assigned female by programmers” - that may become a new term to remember [Note 9]. But as our digital assistants are female-coded, they get sexually harassed, and as the teams that create and work on our digital technology are dominated by men, the responses from our assistants are rather lacking [Note 10].
“Humans have rights,” Naomi said, “to some degree; and machines do not.” She then mentioned that Saudi Arabia granted a robot rights that women there don’t have; the robot in question, Sophia, happens to be assigned female by programmers. Perhaps not the future that we hoped for - in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Pavel Chekov said, “We do believe all planets have a sovereign claim to inalienable human rights”; that’s something that’s lacking here, even though it is a part of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Granted, Azetbur rebuffs him when she says, “Inalien... If only you could hear yourselves? 'Human rights.' Why the very name is racist. The Federation is no more than a 'homo sapiens' only club.” Perhaps Chekov should have referred to the Federation Charter (or the Rights of Sentience from Star Wars) and said the rights of sentient beings instead of humans - something that we’re going to have to consider, as we move forwards with AI. Once we all get on board with human rights, that is.
Humans are great at dehumanizing. I had mentioned Canadian dehumanization of First Nations people - I was actually referring to Aboriginal Australians and got the two UK-descended colonizers confused in my memory. Not that any colonizing power is free of guilt when it comes to acts of terrorism towards native peoples - Canada committed genocide and performed experiments on indigenous people (1, 2, 3, 4, 5); Australia did the same (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) [Note 11].
Captain Picard argues for Commander Data's right to be viewed as a sentient being.
Jean-Luc Picard’s three criteria for sentience (going back to “The Measure of a Man”) were actually criteria that Bruce Maddox stated: intelligence, self-awareness, and consciousness. It’ll take a while for humans to recognize sentience in those who are not human, as humans fail to recognize humans as being worthy of being human as things currently stand. Granted, in Star Wars, droid sentience was questioned, and droid rights weren’t universally granted. Hopefully here in the real world, we can figure out human rights before we have to grapple droid rights or the rights of sentience.
Manly Guys Doing Manly Things is (was) a webcomic about macho action heroes - the creator burned out and stopped making new strips, though the website is still up. The strip that’s being referenced is “the straw that broke the robocamel’s exoskeleton”; Commander Badass is a vat-grown human and can’t read the captcha, Raiden is a cyborg (but still has a human brain, I think - I never played Metal Gear Solid), and Jones is a human with no enhancements whatsoever. But as 3D printed limbs become more ubiquitous, we’re going to have to have a conversation about where the lines are drawn between humans, cyborgs, and androids. I, too, love breathing oxygen.
My final line, “be kind to each other, because this is all we’ve got,'' is something that I got from Kyle Hill from Because Science. If you ever read this, Kyle Hill: I love your channel. And Dr. Moogega Stricker: thank you for Because Space and for protecting the Earth.
Notes:
When introducing ourselves, we intentionally gave our pronouns. It is important for people to give their pronouns at functions like these to normalize the act of telling others our pronouns and respecting people’s gender identities. As pronouns are words that we use to replace names (she/him/theirs), it is important to use what most accurately represents the people to whom we are referring. If you don’t know someone’s pronouns, please ask them.
2. I identify as graygender - that is, I identify outside the gender binary and feel generally ambivalent about my gender identity. I really am comfortable with any pronoun that is used for me (except for “it”) - however, I very much enjoy it when people change up what pronouns they use for me.
3. The third-person pronouns that I have been using are xe (subject), xem (object), xyrs (possessive), xyrself/xemself (reflexive), xyr (pronominal).
4. “Author, Author” (VOY 7x20) talked about AI (in the form of holograms) rights, where “The Measure of a Man” talked about AI (in the form of androids) rights. The Doctor is not declared to be a person, but he is granted the status of an artist.
5. While looking up Guri, I discovered that TC-14 and TC-70 had feminine programming (I might have known that about TC-14 and forgotten), and that 10-4TO might not have been gendered.
6. After writing this, I later discovered that nanny droids are still canon. There is one with the unfortunate name of “Auntie Nags”. That’s just terrible.
7. For more, read “Before the law: Criminalizing sexual conduct in colonial and post-colonial southern African societies” from the Human Rights Watch.
The story of how a hastily-drawn line divided one people into two.
8. The “pulling out” and “historical lines” messes that I am referring to here is mainly a reference to the Durand Line, the Sykes–Picot Agreement, and the Partition of India.
9. When talking about assigned sex, there are already the terms “assigned female at birth” (AFAB), “assigned male at birth” (AMAB), along with others.
10. There is a UNESCO paper called “I'd blush if I could: closing gender divides in digital skills through education”: it is a policy paper on the digital skills gender gap; a think piece about the gender equality paradox; and a think piece about how AI voice assistants projected as young women perpetuate harmful gender biases. Both of the linked articles refer to this paper.
11. I specifically said that the indigenous people weren’t even considered human - apparently, that’s a common misunderstanding, conflating the Flora and Fauna Act and the 1967 Referendum (though little has changed since the referendum).
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