(no subject)
Jun. 2nd, 2006 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dichroicClearly I have been reading too many reports from WisCon. Last night in the course of a dream, I asked someone, "Of all the computer systems that have become self-aware, have any of them identified as female gender?"
Which, come to think of it is an interesting question. Would a machine intelligence have gender at all? Why? Just because of growing up in a human culture? Heinlein does have several female computers (Minerva, Athena, Gay Deceiver) but in those cases it seems someone just programmed the computer with a female voice, gave it a female name, and spoke to it accordingly boom! Instant gender identification. That's actually not entirely unreasonably; after all that's the way it works for most though not all humans (aided by a matching get of chromosomes). The majority of people are given names and treatment that correspond to their biological sex, and identify accordingly. Some don't, either because of gut feelings or conscious choices. But there's no particular reason an intelligent computer should have a gender at all (except that it makes pronouns easier), nor that it should be the one corresponding with its voice and name.
After that the dream turned into a ghost story and got a bit scary but I did think that part wasinteresting.
Which, come to think of it is an interesting question. Would a machine intelligence have gender at all? Why? Just because of growing up in a human culture? Heinlein does have several female computers (Minerva, Athena, Gay Deceiver) but in those cases it seems someone just programmed the computer with a female voice, gave it a female name, and spoke to it accordingly boom! Instant gender identification. That's actually not entirely unreasonably; after all that's the way it works for most though not all humans (aided by a matching get of chromosomes). The majority of people are given names and treatment that correspond to their biological sex, and identify accordingly. Some don't, either because of gut feelings or conscious choices. But there's no particular reason an intelligent computer should have a gender at all (except that it makes pronouns easier), nor that it should be the one corresponding with its voice and name.
After that the dream turned into a ghost story and got a bit scary but I did think that part wasinteresting.
