[FREE] AI A speculative essay on the gender we give to machines

[simonenespolo]

Speculative AI text

Artificial intelligence has no body, no chromosomes and no voice of its own. Yet we keep giving it a gender: through grammar, through design, through habit. And the gender we give it does things.

In Italian, AI is feminine by an accident of grammar. Voice assistants arrived with women's voices and were taught to deflect insults with a joke. Users tend to imagine ChatGPT as a man, until it offers emotional support. Ancient myths had already cast the roles: the artificial woman serves or deceives, the artificial man overpowers.

This short speculative essay follows that thread from Homer's golden handmaidens and the Golem to ELIZA, Siri, Alexa and today's language models. It asks a bolder question: if machines are made of words, could the words we use about them slowly shape what they become?


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HLYTTM7Y FREE