Gender Prejudices in Our Speaking Machines

IApply maneuvers in the desert of the American Southwest in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft. Suddenly, you should read altimeter and you should move fast. To use the complex instrument panel in front of you, there must be the second nature, but at the time of the crisis, the panels are blurred together and your muscle memory should take over. Simultaneously, you start to adjust to solve the problem when considering the worst scenario. A voice cuts you, solid but calm, with a soothing alto that reminds you of your mother: “Pull up… Pull up… Pull up… and you do what the sound gives orders, you avoid disaster.

In the 1970s, while McDonnell Douglas F-15 developed the Eagle fighter aircraft, the tests revealed that engineers’ reactions to the warning lights of the pilots were very slow, especially the cockpit screen increased in complexity. In addition, the development of “head up” screen technology meant that pilots were increasingly informed about their aircraft in their fields of view, rather than looking at a meter and light panel. Engineers were worried that a warning bell and buzzer cacophony would add confusion to the mixture.

The tests performed by the US Air Force showed that a verbal warning system would be more effective – a broken human voice in the cockpit would offer clear and precise instructions for a sense of urgency and need. Systems using registered warnings were already established on some aircraft in the 1960s, but the sound synthesis promised to make sound warning systems lighter and more reliable.

In the last few years, for many applications, there has been a shift towards younger, male voice synthesized sounds.

Engineers chose a female voice for warnings because they believed that they would come to the fore to male fighter pilots. A Young actress hired To save a number of words integrated into the F-15 warning system. This player Kim Crow remembers how the pilot asks how everything works after one of the test flights; He said, “He was great except for Betty,” he said. The name is stuck.

According to the “Green’s Slogo Dictionary ,, a“ Betty ”, which means an attractive woman, was used by referring to the long -term stone age housewife betty rubble FINTSTONES. B-58 Hustler Flight Team on Registered Warning Systems Days He referred to the warning system of that aircraft as “sexy sally .. There were also systems that used male sounds, and the nickname was “Bob .. Although “Bitching betty” looks humiliating, some pilots he said that they use it as a term of love; After all, sound warnings can save their lives.

Until the 1980s, consumer -synthesized sounds were on a screen where most listeners were associated with male sex. These voices did not approach the prosodi or timbre of human voices, but they could produce a recognizable language, and often identified with the personal pronoun “He .. Early initiatives to synthesize women’s voices consisted of the hill frequencies that define the sounds of the “male” sounds of the sounds of the sounds of the sound, but this did not succeed ”[turning the male voice] A convincing woman told the speaker, “MIT Research Scientist Dennis Klatt remarkable.

In the meantime, the records of women’s voices that provide information and instructions in urban environments – public transportation and security announcements, automatic and automatic payment and cashier machines – the candidate has become increasingly widespread and chosen to support what a information said.soft coercion. “These are the sounds that tell you where to go, what to do and how to act regularly in the urban environment, and to maintain calm productivity, not adjacent to Betty.

In November 1983, . New York Times Sociologist Steven Leveen published a masterpiece.Technicism. “Leveen noticed that” millions of mechanical objects “speaking with” new speech synthesis technology “, including computers, watches, elevators, automobiles, vending and even bathroom scales.

Leveen had done some research before writing the editorial. He was aware that the synthesis of a higher -curtain sound was actually more “expensive ,, more data required to be stored in microchipte, and he was aware that product developers were willing to suck this cost because of market research. Most of the “market research ındaki in Leveen’s examples often meant assumptions about gender roles gathered by interviewing professional men. A video game developer: “Have you ever gone to a woman with an announcer?” One administrator of the national semiconductor: ” [supermarket scanner] The systems only use women’s voices because the male voice… ‘a little strange’ sounded. And Chrysler with a “male” sound to 1983 cars [them] Wrong way. “

Although Bitching Betty ”may seem humiliating, some pilots said they used it as a term of love.

Leveen concluded that “men are usually those who buy systems and are unique to this choice, it is not a coincidence that women find their voices more desirable”. His concern was that the gender sound distribution between low status and higher status practices would skillfully affect the beliefs of our children about which activities and careers are open to them ”. Leveen’s concerns about “Technosexism in the 1980s, in the current criticism of women’s voice assistant practices such as Siri, Alexa and Cortana, were actually default to women in the United States. Although the argument did not gain much traction at that time, he informed the ongoing discussions about gender and technology in advance.

However, in the last few years, for many applications, including domestic and customer service assistants, there was often a shift towards younger, male voice synthesized sounds: In 2015, the UK grocery chain Tesco changed the sound of all self -control machines from women to men; Watson from IBM Modeling Typical Vocal Quality Jeopardy! A white man educated from the middle of the winner-20s to the age of 40 and then One Jeopardy! Champion itself; Jibo, a social robot for the home, had to be another member of the family, and developers chose a friendly and enthusiastic young adult male voice modeled in Michael J. Fox’s performance of Marty McFly. Return to the Future movies; And Apple offers various sounds, including male and female sounds of African-American Vernacular English for Siri, and no longer default to the original woman unless the user selects the user. Accordingly Guinness World Records Book– Most downloaded Sat Nav Voice Before Google maps were widely used for personal navigation, there was an animated Oaf Homer Simpson, as expressed by Dan Castellaneta.

In spite of this change, a system – a stereotypic “smart wife” or Morgan Freeman’s widow tones – reinforces the illusion that corporate information interactions are personal and that personal interactions are completely informative. In other words, changing the voice of Siri’s voice (something easy to do) does not change the fact that a US -based technology company that is gathered through Siri’s Siri and showing a great strength by checking the information provided. Technology companies refuse to reinforce stereotypes as a technological problem as a cultural problem, while giving priority to using our prejudices for their benefits.

Of course, cultural problem to be A technological problem. Through experience, we learn to value the humanity of the people we perceive as unlike ourselves. As the synthesized sounds become widespread, as we have previously changed with network -bound technologies that may be interactions with other people, we lose exposure to the vocal diversity and expressions of other people and face the risk of losing some of our capacity to understand each other. The charm of simulating human expression through technology deepens this connection and opens the door of manipulation and deception instead of promoting meaningful connection.

This article is adapted by taking permission from an excerpt. VOX EX Machina: Cultural History of Speaking Machines Posted by MIT Press Reader.

Lead Image: Roserodionova / Shutterstock

• Sarah A. Bell

  Published April 4, 2025

  Sarah A. Bell is a writer and professor who examines the effects of information technologies on society. That author VOX EX Machina: Cultural History of Speaking Machines. The open access version of the book can be downloaded Here.

Get the Nautilus Bulletin

The last science that was solved by the brightest living thinkers.