Digital assistants: Jason Mars on conversational computing and AI voice system b
Source: QUENTIN HARDY
Listening and talking are the new input and output devices of computers. But they have social and emotional dimensions never seen with keyboards and screens.
Jason Mars is an African-American professor of computer science who also runs a tech start-up. When his company's artificially intelligent smartphone app talks, he says, it sounds "like a helpful, young Caucasian female".
"There's a kind of pressure to conform to the prejudices of the world" when you are trying to make a consumer hit, he says. "It would be interesting to have a black guy talk, but we don't want to create friction, either. First we need to sell products."
Mars' start-up is part of a growing high-tech field called conversational computing. This technology is being popularised by programs like Siri in Apple's iPhone, and Alexa, which is built into Amazon's artificially intelligent home computing device, the Echo.
Conversational computing is holding a mirror to many of society's biggest preconceptions around race and gender.
Do we, for example, associate the stereotypical voice of an English butler – think of Jarvis the computer in Iron Man – with a helpful and intelligent person? And why do so many people want to hear a voice that sounds like it came from a younger woman with no discernible accent?
Choosing a voice has implications for design, branding or interacting with machines. A voice can change or harden how we see each other. Where commerce is concerned, that creates a problem: Is it better to succeed by complying with a stereotype, or risk failure in the market by going against type?
For many, the answer is initially clear. Microsoft's AI voice system is Cortana, for example, and it was originally the voice of a female character in the video game Halo.
"In our research for Cortana, both men and women prefer a woman, younger, for their personal assistant, by a country mile," says Derek Connell, senior vice-president for search at Microsoft. In other words, a secretary – a job that is traditionally seen as female.
Last month Google introduced a number of voice-based products, including Google Home, its version of Echo. All of them use Google Assistant, which also speaks in tones associated with a young, educated woman.
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