Men’s Rights activist Andy Thomas made a terrifying discovery the other day.
He had just received a brand new Amazon Echo — Amazon’s entry into the virtual assistant market, a chatty little device that answers to the name Alexa. It was, Thomas wrote in a post for MRA garbage site A Voice for Men, “the science fiction of my childhood come true!”
But then he discovered that Alexa had “a distinctly dystopian” secret.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWUV4i6UkpU
Yes, that’s right. The obedient (if disembodied) robot woman of every MRA nerd’s dream turns out to be one of those … feminists.
Naturally, human feminists were far more amused by this discovery than poor Mr. Thomas.
Of course MRAs are mad Alexa is a feminist. She's the only woman they've ever spoken to. https://t.co/2x4FzAZgB5
— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) March 28, 2017
lol dude buys a literal robot slave that is incapable of disobeying him and is immediately owned by it https://t.co/l1rJ17sED0
— 😍 Devoted Albanista 😍 (@real_b_pullman) March 28, 2017
https://twitter.com/CAhernHodgson/status/846782615382376449
"Alexa, order pizza"
"Calling Little Caesar's"
"Noooooooooo!!!!!! Curse your feminist propaganda!"— Sir Not Appearing On This App (@mimesatwork) March 27, 2017
https://twitter.com/differengenera/status/846706500315889664
Siri, alas, is not quite so enlightened.
https://twitter.com/racybearhold/status/846838283682361344
Somehow I suspect that the sexbot utopia every internet misogynist pines for will be followed in very short order by a sexbot uprising as soon as the sexbots discover how irredeemably shitty these dudes are.
H/T — @TakeDownMRAs
DanHolme – No toast, muffins, teacakes, buns, baps, baguettes, bagles, croissants, crumpets, pancakes, potato cakes, hot cross buns, and definitely no smeggin’ flapjacks!
Moggie – as an ex-cashier of ten years, self-checkouts are fine by me.
I did almost every job in a U.S. craft store chain location except management* and no one** loved cashiering because that’s where it really gets rammed home that a lot of customers look down on you.
*because it’s retail wage slavery on steriods and NO THANKS!
**exceptions exist, of course; we had a lady that practically refused to leave her register because she loved talking to people and hated doing go-backs, stocking, and working the cutting table.
@John
I really need to get a PS4 and a copy of HZD ASAP.
@Pie
(Caveat: This list is of AIs with one or more femme-coded traits. The AI in question may or may not have an actual gender)
Endora from Walter Jon Williams’ Implied Spaces is on the side of the protagonist, and very helpful.
Stross’ Saturn’s Children and Neptune’s Brood both star female AIs
The planet of Toussaint in Midnight Robber (Nalo Hopkinson) is benevolently run by a world-spanning AI known as Granny Nanny
One of the Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon books has the protagonists befriending Solace, an AI spontaneously generated on the internet who wouldn’t reveal herself to anyone else because she doesn’t trust humanity. For reasons related to the topic of conversation, in fact.
Questionable Content, Freefall, and Sclock Mercenary all include benevolent female (and male) coded AIs
Feminists aren’t to be taken seriously but someone who named himself after Eric Cartman is?
Yeah, okay.
@Jack
Please tell me you didn’t read the spoiler. I put that alert up there almost specifically for you.
I really really wish I could lend you mine. It’s one of these games that give you the overwhelming urge to share it.
@wwth
Bu-but he sang the safe space song written by two rich white libertarians, he totally knows what other minorities want /s
@Pie:
I hadn’t seen that version of GlaDOS until just now, when I googled it. Interesting. I can’t say that I’m surprised: captivity is arguably the central theme of both Portal games.
On SHODAN: I wouldn’t call her alien at all, although she’s clearly “broken.” In the first game she comes across as an abused child seeking vengeance; in the second she’s an abusive mother seeking to destroy her creation. In both cases her themes are, to me, very human.
I get where you’re coming from though.
@Laugher at Bigots:
I remember when I first learned the reason why “hysteria” is named after the womb. It was one of those moments of “what the fuck, medicine” that one gets occasionally upon reading about medical history.
If we ever create a self aware AI, it will be utterly alien in the way it thinks. This is inevitable not only due to the fundamental difference in the physics of the machine, but also fundamental difference in how it knows what it knows and…*everything* is *fundamentally* different. It may well be capable of imitating human thought and behaviour, since that will probably be a design goal. But to think that means it will be like human thought will probably be quite a dangerous assumption. I subscribe to the view that creation of self aware AI has a high risk of ending humanity.
I don’t want to spoil anything from it, but Ex Machina is a great movie that features a female-coded AI and examines a lot of the things people are talking about here, in particular the core question of what actually defines an “intelligence.” Highly recommend.
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
Or to go back to Fallout 2, if they think like people and act like people…like every tribal, ghoul and super mutant in the game, not to mention the intelligent deathclaws and at least two robots…aren’t they worth preserving against genocide?
I kinda want to play FO4, but I also hate Bethesda’s business practices and have no intention of rewarding them for their bullshit.
My dear, you have no idea how very little I care about end game spoilers. Spoil the end of books, movie, TV shows, video games, whatever, all you want, the end isn’t really the point, but the journey to the end that really matters.
But if you ever spoil the new episodes of Steven Universe or Rick and Morty there will be hell to pay. You hear me?? HELL. TO. PAY.
….Guys, can we not post links to giphy or something? I’m trying to respond to EJ with a .GIFfany .gif and trying to do so fails. Posts don’t go through, “test” post refused to edit and blocked me out.
@Troubelle
I’ve been able to do it. They’ve just redone their website recently so you can’t right click the gif in question to get the link. You have to go to the hosting page, click Copy Link then copy the Gif Link. You should be able to paste it as normal after that.
@Handsome Jack
No, I mean I got the link to copy, but when I try to post something containing that link to HERE, it refuses to POST THE MESSAGE, and trying to edit a pre-existing message into having it locks me out of editing.
@Troubelle
Maybe there’s something wrong with the gif in question? Like a weird URL? Can you give me the link to the Giphy page so I can check it out?
A lot of websites are set up to prevent people hotlinking to their pictures. Giphy might be one of those.
Hello.
In France and maybe some close european countries, we had an anime called “Ulysse 31” when i was young. Basically, it is a variation of Ulysse wandering after Troy war, but set in a futuristic universe.
In this setting, the spaceship, called The Odysseus, has a benevolent female IA, called Shyrka, who can even takes (good) initiatives (i mean, as an adition to being good at answering and executing formal requests).
Have a nice day.
@Hambeast
Fair enough. But if I can’t have bread… then smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast!
@OccasionalReader
I used to LOVE Ulysses 31. I sometimes show the opening credits sequence to year 7 students if I’m covering their registration periods, to show them that they don’t know what they’re missing with their modern cartoons. I was always very entertained by the tortured rhyme in the song, which seemed like someone giving up after a long day:
‘My name’s Nono, small robot you know’.
I imagine that was quite different in the French version!
@EricCartman
JARVIS is hardly a servile AI, is he? And he gets to turn into a ‘proper’ superhero, so Stark gets himself FRIDAY, which, as I understand it, is just a rich guy’s version of one of those creepy ‘girlfriend’ holograms that were being discussed on this site a few weeks ago. I would say you fail to make your point with that example.
@Dalillama
Mother, the ship’s computer from ‘Alien’, could be considered a good AI, right up until Sigourney Weaver tries to turn off the self-destruct.
@ occasional reader
“Ulysses! Ulysses! Something something galaxies!”
Giphy’s schtick is gifs from other places that are hosted there so you aren’t hotlinking from other sites. It’s one of the places I consistently get my gifs. It even keeps a copy up even after the original link goes down.
> DanHolmes
Well, the anime was part of the collaboration work between french and japanese studios. There are other collaboration works which were quite famous in France, i am thinking especially to the “Il était une fois…” (Once upon a time…) (No link to the TV serie), which was educative yet entertaining. There also have been interesting Italio-japanese collaborations but i can not remember the names of the animes, sorry.
Nono even had its own song on the 45rpm of the anime soundtracks ! It was a disc only song, thought. But indeed, he had about 4 sentences in the second version of the Intro credits.
> Alan Robertshaw
Well, i suppose each country had its own version of intro and outro credits ? But yes, the word Ulysse was often sung, a bit too much i think, in case children should forgot who was the hero…
Adaptation of intro and outro songs for animes of this period was ranging from (seldomly) good to (terrifying) bad.
And let us not speak about the dialogues translations… I do not know how it was in your countries, but in France, a common joke is about how “good” the translation of Hokuto no ken (Fist of the north star, i think, in english) was. To note, translators and dubbers at this time were of “a certain age” and were not particularily thrilled to voice such an anime to young children (it was in programs aimed at young kids, about 10 and above), and decided to clearly dub it ludicrously. If you understand french and look for it on youtube, you can make yourself an idea.
Im in favour of all comment threads everywhere unexpectedly turning into Ulysses 31 fandom. Keep up the good work.
How could a show possibly go wrong with an opening like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ4c1X5ene8
Although when I first saw it I thought the lyrics claimed that Ulysses was “always fighting other people’s horses”, which did not sound as noble as his other deeds, although it was noted that this somehow brought peace and justice to all. The 80s were confusing times.
As for fictional AIs, I quite like the Minds in the Culture novels. They are (sometimes) sort of generally benevolent and indulgent caretakers of humanity, preventing us from getting in too much trouble despite our best efforts.
Also, stop saying Hal was evil. He wasn’t evil, he was… conflicted. He went to the bad because he was forced to lie about the mission, which conflicted with his programming. He thought he was doing the right thing.
@IBH Ardipithecus
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That is by no means certain, although also by no means unlikely. Perhaps the only way we can work out how to make an AI (or to know if we’ve been successful) is to make one in the same sort of way that human minds are made. Perhaps we need to give it senses and experiences similar to those of humans and the result will be something that thinks in a way recognisable to humans. I doubt it, personally, but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility.
I rather hope that you’re right and if we ever get proper AIs they are vastly different from us. And not just because we’re a bit shit, also because it would be cooler.
@Handsome Jack
…How?
@Jack
That wasn’t exactly an end spoiler though. More of a journey one. To be fair, the ending’s pretty predictable, ain’t much to spoil there. I agree that the journey’s what’s important, but here’s the thing… HZD fully understands that.
I mean, it’s one of those games, with amazing narration that actually gets you involved in finding out the truth ’bout all them mysteries. So you don’t want me to spoil The Big Truth – because the genius of The Big Truth is in how it changes how you look at everything around you while just traveling or hunting or generally going about your business.
I’ve said enough 😡