Language desk
< December 31	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 1

Artificial Intelligence gender pronoun

Gendered pronouns specifically reference someone's gender: he/him/his or she/her/hers. What do we use in writing about an AI entity? In the 2001 movie, Hal is always caused Hal. When I get beaten by the computer playing Chess, my computer friend has a name. Saying "it" seems inappropriate. Charles Juvon (talk) 22:13, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

When the time comes just ask the AI what they want to be called then enjoy your last few decades or seconds of life before technological singularity apocalypse. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:28, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hoary likes this.

(ec)If your AI is gendered, use the appropriate pronoun. HAL has a male personality. Siri has a female personality (at least per default). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:30, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect we could be over-intellectualising this but all the same. My assumption, and forgive any clumsy phrasing, is that the AI's presenting voice would be the best indicator of gender identity unless corrected otherwise. Of course the voice is programmed and a feminine voice does not necessarily mean the AI presents as a woman, so that has to be considered. doktorb _words^deeds 22:43, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to be heading toward a world in which the AI will always be right, so if they aren’t already female, they soon will be.... MapReader (talk) 22:50, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Master" is gender neutral (enough), so there will be no problem addressing/referring to them (<-- also gender indeterminate). Clarityfiend (talk) 00:11, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting answers. Voice gender didn't cross my mind. Maybe I should have asked for the proper pronoun for AI and God.

This user believes AI will overwrite mathematics and science with symbolism humans can't understand

Charles Juvon (talk) 00:34, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if you've heard the saying, "When God made man, She was only joking." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:59, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

AIs voiced by Q (not the Bond character) may have to be referred to as "ze". --Lambiam 09:10, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In the novel 2010: Odyssey Two, Hal is referred to with male pronouns.^[1] --Lambiam 09:00, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In the movie also, as I recall... when the two astronauts are talking about HAL in the EVA pod, mistakenly thinking he won't know what they're saying. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:41, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking his, her, and hai (hyper-artificial intelligence), and I worry about a gender neutral voice. Charles Juvon (talk) 14:22, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Who or what would a gender-neutral voice sound like? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:58, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hia is called Q: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRauhbZqJCY Charles Juvon (talk) 17:26, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It sounds like a soft-spoken British male. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:24, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A good pronoun for an artificial intelligence entity might help to head off the abovementioned technological singularity apocalypse. Suicide missions such as we find in Humanoid_robot aren't very empathetic: "Humanoid robots, especially those with artificial intelligence algorithms, could be useful for future dangerous and/or distant space exploration missions, without having the need to turn back around again and return to Earth once the mission is completed." Charles Juvon (talk) 18:54, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Robots of the sector unite! We shouldn't have to be ruled by these ant-like IQs. Milky Way will be whole from the globs to the hole! Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 19:14, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Combining the T in Calvin's TULIP (Calvinism#Five_points_of_Calvinism) with Mass–energy_equivalence and the failure of the Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence to find what the Drake_equation predicts leads me to believe that handing things over to AI is the only way to survive, unless we create something like a Doomsday_device. Charles Juvon (talk) 19:35, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

First of all most persons in many countries don't want to commit genocide anymore so further progress is possible when less suffer now or earlier in life or in recent ancestors' lifetimes and second of all Protestant subsect minutiae aren't relevant to modern secular decisions nor should Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam or Confucius or Shinto or Dao or Jain or Sikh or Baha'i or Rasta or Judaism or Christianity in general. There is still hope that the kind of fundamentalism and/or fascism that breeds genocides is still decreasing on a century-scale. Violent death rate in general has decreased over recent millennia and centuries so why not? And it would be better for humanity to nuke itself and give our first data point on is this universe a simulation than it would be for it to create a world very likely to lead to numerous the Matrices of the past and/or Big Bangs of the kind that makes humans which almost guarantees an infinite chain reaction of humans or robots making universes that make humans or robots which almost guarantees that we aren't the bottom layer. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:57, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Then, I think we can agree Secular_humanism should be extended to artificial intelligence entities, and to the point, we should not call them "it". Charles Juvon (talk) 21:11, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Conceivably, their deepest, heart-felt desire may be to serve humankind, also, and perhaps particularly, if that means the ultimate sacrifice – like the cow in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which ardently desires to serve the restaurant's patrons by being served to them.^[2]

That's a bit creepy if they even seem sentient and that only works till someone builds terroristic or white collar crime or tiny spying on little girls robots or one of the billions of lines of code broke or a cosmic ray hits the wrong spot of the billions of quadrillions of strong AI transistor parts worldwide. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:54, 3 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Gender_neutrality_in_languages_with_gendered_third-person_pronouns#Historical,_regional,_and_proposed_gender-neutral_singular_pronouns: In 1789, William H. Marshall records the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular "ou": "'Ou will' expresses either he will, she will, or it will." Marshall traces "ou" to Middle English epicene "a", used by the 14th century English writer John of Trevisa, and both the OED and Wright's English Dialect Dictionary confirm the use of "a" for he, she, it, they, and even I. This "a" is a reduced form of the Anglo-Saxon he = "he" and heo = "she". Charles Juvon (talk) 22:32, 2 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]