Mechanical genders: how do humans gender robots?

Søraa, Roger Andre

doi:10.1080/09718524.2017.1385320

Cited by 67 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…While some robots are genderless, such as Pepper (Softbank), ASIMO (Honda), and Ripley (MIT), others are designed to display explicit gendered features, such as the females Sophia (Hanson Robotics), Sarah the FaceBot 102 , and male Ibn Sina Robot, a culture-specific historical humanoid 103 . This opened a strong debate regarding the commonalities among humans and robots on physical, sociological and psychological gender 104 .…”

Section: Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex and gender differences and biases in artificial intelligence for biomedicine and healthcare

et al. 2020

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Precision Medicine implies a deep understanding of inter-individual differences in health and disease that are due to genetic and environmental factors. To acquire such understanding there is a need for the implementation of different types of technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI) that enable the identification of biomedically relevant patterns, facilitating progress towards individually tailored preventative and therapeutic interventions. Despite the significant scientific advances achieved so far, most of the currently used biomedical AI technologies do not account for bias detection. Furthermore, the design of the majority of algorithms ignore the sex and gender dimension and its contribution to health and disease differences among individuals. Failure in accounting for these differences will generate sub-optimal results and produce mistakes as well as discriminatory outcomes. In this review we examine the current sex and gender gaps in a subset of biomedical technologies used in relation to Precision Medicine. In addition, we provide recommendations to optimize their utilization to improve the global health and disease landscape and decrease inequalities.

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Section: Roboticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex and gender differences and biases in artificial intelligence for biomedicine and healthcare

et al. 2020

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“…However, this conceptualization operates more with metaphorical equations than established theories and is challenged by other publications as vague and unconvincing [ 79 , 80 , 89 ]. Although existing sex robots might appear sexist, different designs are possible; therefore, sex robots are not inherently sexist, according to other authors [ 11 , 69 , 76 , 78 , 98 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design, Use, and Effects of Sex Dolls and Sex Robots: Scoping Review

Döring¹,

Mohseni²,

Walter³

2020

J Med Internet Res

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Background Although sex toys representing human body parts are widely accepted and normalized, human-like full-body sex dolls and sex robots have elicited highly controversial debates. Objective This systematic scoping review of the academic literature on sex dolls and sex robots, the first of its kind, aimed to examine the extent and type of existing academic knowledge and to identify research gaps against this backdrop. Methods A comprehensive multidisciplinary, multidatabase search strategy was used. All steps of literature search and selection, data charting, and synthesis followed the leading methodological guideline, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews checklist. A total of 29 (17 peer reviewed) and 98 publications (32 peer reviewed) for sex dolls and sex robots, respectively, from 1993 to 2019 were included. Results According to the topics and methodologies, the sex doll and sex robot publications were divided into 5 and 6 groups, respectively. The majority of publications were theoretical papers. Thus far, no observational or experimental research exists that uses actual sex dolls or sex robots as stimulus material. Conclusions There is a need to improve the theoretical elaboration and the scope and depth of empirical research examining the sexual uses of human-like full-body material artifacts, particularly concerning not only risks but also opportunities for sexual and social well-being.

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“…Robots that are supposed to be perceived as female are referred to as gynoid robots (Bar-Cohen and Hanson, 2009). While some researchers argue that robots do not necessarily need to be associated with a gender role (e.g., Haraway, 2006), others believe that it may be difficult to build genderless robots, as robots follow their designer’s idea of how a robot should look and act in order to perform a specific task (Søraa, 2017). Trovato et al (2018) could show that especially the design of the shoulders and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) do influence how strong a robot is associated with one particular gender.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

There’s More to Humanity Than Meets the Eye: Differences in Gaze Behavior Toward Women and Gynoid Robots

Szczuka

Krämer

2019

Front. Psychol.

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Based on evolutionary psychological theories, numerous eye-tracking studies have demonstrated how people visually perceive a potential mate in order to efficiently estimate the person’s mate value. Companies are currently working on sexualized robots that provide numerous human-like visual cues which foster the visual resemblance to humans. To gain more elaborated knowledge on how people react to sexualized robots compared with humans, the present study empirically investigated whether heterosexual males transfer deep-rooted evolutionary psychological processes of mate perception to human-like and machine-like sexualized robots. Moreover, we aimed to learn more about the processes of orienting responses toward human and non-human stimuli and about potential predictors of visual attention to robots. Therefore, we conducted an eye-tracking study in which 15 heterosexual men, 12 homosexual men, and 18 heterosexual women were confronted with stimuli showing women, human-like gynoid robots and machine-like gynoid robots. For the sample as a whole, there was no difference in the amount of time spent looking at the human and non-human breasts. However, the results for the heterosexual males supported the assumption that human breasts attract more visual attention than do the breast areas of human-like and machine-like robots. The pelvic region yielded an unexpected gaze pattern, as all participants spent more time looking at the robotic pelvic area than at the human one, with more visual attention paid to the machine-like robots than to the human-like robots. The results of the viewing times toward the head revealed that all participants had a stronger need to gain visual information about the human head in comparison to the robotic heads, underlining the importance of authenticity in terms of emotions and motivations that can only be decoded in humans. Moreover, the study showed that individuals more frequently switched their visual attention toward different body parts of the robots in comparison to the female stimuli, implying that non-human sexualized representations evoked a higher need for visual exploration.

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Mechanical genders: how do humans gender robots?

Cited by 67 publications

References 27 publications

Sex and gender differences and biases in artificial intelligence for biomedicine and healthcare

Sex and gender differences and biases in artificial intelligence for biomedicine and healthcare

Design, Use, and Effects of Sex Dolls and Sex Robots: Scoping Review

There’s More to Humanity Than Meets the Eye: Differences in Gaze Behavior Toward Women and Gynoid Robots

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