How Can Designers Build Interfaces That Avoid the “White Default?”
In 2016, the artist Deborah Roberts created “Pluralism Series,” a series of prints that, borrowing the aesthetic of a Microsoft Word document, lists the names of Black people. Name after name has that jarring squiggly red line underneath it, as if it was a misspelling.
I know this squiggly red li
The Efficiency Illusion: How Technology Can Create More Jobs Than It Replaces
One of the evergreen debates repeatedly reignited by technological advancements and their adoption has been the fear of how it will lead to wholesale replacement of jobs. However, historical data and trends show that technology has the potential to create more jobs and not necessarily lead to mass u
Scientists use deep learning algorithms to predict political ideology based on facial characteristics
A new study in Denmark used machine learning techniques on photographs of faces of Danish politicians to predict whether their political ideology is left- or right-wing. The accuracy of predictions was 61%. Faces of right-wing politicians were more likely to have happy and less likely to have neutral facial expressions. Women with attractive faces were more likely to be right-wing, while women whose faces showed contempt were more likely to be left-wing. The study was published in Scientific Reports. ...
Mirages: On Anthropomorphism in Dialogue Systems
Automated dialogue or conversational systems are anthropomorphised by
developers and personified by users. While a degree of anthropomorphism is
inevitable, conscious and unconscious design choices can guide users to
personify them to varying degrees. Encouraging users to relate to automated
systems as if they were human can lead to transparency and trust issues, and
high risk scenarios caused by over-reliance on their outputs. As a result,
natural language processing researchers have begun to investigate factors that
induce personification and develop resources to mitigate such effects. However,
these efforts are fragmented, and many aspects of anthropomorphism have yet to
be considered. In this paper, we discuss the linguistic factors that contribute
to the anthropomorphism of dialogue systems and the harms that can arise,
arguing that it can reinforce stereotypes of gender roles and notions of
acceptable language. We recommend that future efforts towards developing
dialogue systems take particular care in their design, development, release,
and description; and attend to the many linguistic cues that can elicit
personification by users.
Katherine Heller on Twitter
Inspired by this tweet I asked ChatGPT the first half of this question for 5 and 1 year old girls (left) and boys (right). This isn't about critiquing one chatbot vs another. We all need to think about the impact we are having on society and gender. https://t.co/wko1bDVPr1 pic.twitter.com/JpGmHc2bpy— Katherine Heller (@kat_heller) February 11, 2023
