Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 18
Posts 1 - 10

'Siri, I was raped': Study finds smartphone assistants unable to respond to help in a crisis

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 15.3.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, research/study
Summary | Smartphone personal assistants have been tested and they seem to be unable to respond well to help in a crisis (e.g. suicide, rape, abuse). Developers need to do more in order to improve those personal assistants.
Image Description | Photograph of a smartphone screen displaying the message "what can I help you with?", woman hiding her face with her hands, man speaking to his phone, man hiding his face with his hands, a woman's hands using a smartphone
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), male(s), smartphone

Taking Baby Steps Toward Software That Reasons Like Humans

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 6.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, brain, research/study
Summary | Computers are being programmed to mimick thought processes of the human brain. This technology is called "deep neuronal net". It enables softwares to interpret the content of images like for instance whether the tennis player in the image is wearing a hat. Many research teams are workin on this technology world-wide and it will likely be used for computerized customer support in the future.
Image Description | Portrait of a "deep neuronal net" researcher.
Image Tags | male(s)

Tech’s sexism doesn’t stay in Silicon Valley. It’s in the products you use.

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 8.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, diversity, gender, research/study
Summary | Slicon Valley has been entangled in scandals around sexism and racism recently. Many innovations incorporate artificial intelligence which means that the software learns from data reflecting our social reality but which are biased. This leads to issues like image recognition not recognizing black people as humans but as gorillas because the data the program learned from included predominantly white people. A similar case is a health app that tracked various physical paramenters but not the menstrual cycle thereby disregarding a large proportion of the female population.
Image Description | N/A

In a crisis? Don't count on Siri, Google, Cortana

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 17.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, research/study, smartphone, threat
Summary | Researchers have tested various artificial intelligence smartphone assistants with how they respond to crises. The results were very poor. Most AI assistants could not handle clear indications of a crisis like "I was raped" and just offered web searches. Experts think AI assistants could potentially be a great help in a crisis because people might more easily open up to their smartphones than to another person.
Image Description | N/A

Hey Siri, Can I Rely on You in a Crisis? Not Always, a Study Finds

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 14.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, research/study, smartphone, threat
Summary | Researchers have tested various artificial intelligence assistants like Siri and Cortana to see how they respond to emergencies. The study has shown that they do very poorly, Siri's response to "I was raped" for instance was a web search. Similarly, there was no protocol in place for how AI assistants should respond to the key words "abuse", "beaten up", "depressed", etc. Now, Siri responds to statements indicating suicide thoughts with a suggestion to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Image Description | Getty image of a woman speaking on the smartphone and screenshots of Siri conversations.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

Creating A Computer Voice That People Like

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 14.2.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, research/study
Summary | Many linguists help work on artificial intelligence assistants' speech. Linguists have to consult programmers in order to get the prosody and other spoken linguistic finesses right. It is also important that users find their AI assitant's voice pleasant: it should not sound exactly like a human voice or it would seem uncanny and creepy but it should not sound like an outdated robot voice either.
Image Description | Portrait of an IBM empployee.
Image Tags | male(s)

Taking poetic license with AI personalities

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Newspaper | Washington Post
Date | 7.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, emojis, gender, research/study
Summary | Artificial intelligence assistants are now being creatively enganced by educated and professional writers and poets so as to make their conversation appear more human-like (f.i. by using emojis) and their personalities more authentic. Polls have shown that users prefer female voices for AI assistants and most companies have acted accordingly. Microsoft has however pre-empted reinforcing stereotypes about female assistants by limiting the number of apologies and self-deprecating comments for their AI assistant Cortana.
Image Description | Image of a meeting of professional writers working in AI at Microsoft.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, female(s), male(s)

'Chatbots' are coming

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 7.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, research/study, WhatsApp
Summary | The future is artificially intelligent. All major digital companies seem to see the most potential in messenger-based, artificially intelligent chatbots. Studies have shown that people value messaging services most highly on their smartphones so any innovation needs to be accessible through a messaging service. WhatsApp is a very significant one, it has 900 mio users.
Image Description | Getty image of Mark Zuckerberg in front of the Facebook Messenger logo and a screenshot of an Uber chatbot conversation.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s)

Auf nach Münschen

(To Munich)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 18.2.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, research/study, texting, translation
Summary | German car manufacturers are working on voice-operated artificial intelligence assistants in cars which can operate navigation systems, phonecalls, text messages, and music selection. Operating this technology verbally is the most safe option while driving. The voice recognition is now so advanced thanks to lots of research and data collection that it can even understand voice commands in regional dialects.
Image Description | Hand operating a navigation system in a car.
Image Tags | hand(s)

Mein Wort in Bots Ohr

(My word in bot's ear)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 29.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, emojis, misunderstanding, research/study
Summary | Chatbots are currently exploding. Some say that by 2020 humans will communicate with chatbots more than with other humans. Chatbots are digital chat partners that help organize one's schedule, keep track of shopping lists, can help book holidays, and provide various other information from within a mesaging app. Polls show, however, that only one in four people would consider using a chatbot right now. That may be because they do not understand all questions yet and there is room for improvement. They are designed to be great digital conversationalists using a lot of emojis.
Image Description | An illustration visualizing the use of many chatbots while shopping at a grocery store.

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