Student Publications Student Scholarship Fall 2019 Designing Women: Essentializing Femininity in AI Linguistics Ellianie S. Vega Gettysburg College Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship Part of the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, and the Linguistics Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Recommended Citation Vega, Ellianie S., "Designing Women: Essentializing Femininity in AI Linguistics" (2019). Student Publications. 797. https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/797 This open access student research paper is brought to you by The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The Cupola. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Designing Women: Essentializing Femininity in AI Linguistics Abstract Since the eighties, feminists have considered technology a force capable of subverting sexism because of technology’s ability to produce unbiased logic. Most famously, Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” posits that the cyborg has the inherent capability to transcend gender because of its removal from social construct and lack of loyalty to the natural world. But while humanoids and artificial intelligence have been imagined as inherently subversive to gender, current artificial intelligence perpetuates gender divides in labor and language as their programmers imbue them with traits considered “feminine.” A majority of 21st century AI and humanoids are programmed to fit emalef stereotypes as they fulfill emotional labor and perform pink-collar tasks, whether through roles as therapists, query-fillers, or companions. This paper examines four specific chat-based AI --ELIZA, XiaoIce, Sophia, and Erica-- and examines how their feminine linguistic patterns are used to maintain the illusion of emotional understanding in regards to the tasks that they perform.