David Brooks & Artificial Intelligence| No Shes In Our Future
Mon, February 1, 2010 
Sasha Pivovarova by Craig McDean for “'Interview’ Feb 2010I feel the need to create a bit of context around my weekend Old Ladies Rebellion outburst against David Brooks. It’s true that if I was holding my new iPad, I would have thrown it against the wall reading his column, then begged for a replacement from Apple.
On Monday, I’m still simmering, calmly annoyed that a man of Brooks’ stature and intelligence can’t add the female pronoun ‘she’ to his vocabulary, when envisioning the future leaders of America.
There are reasons for my concerns.
For years I’ve tracked peripherally, the subject of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a field dominated by men, for a host of reasons and not all their doing.
We ladies tend to love fashion, marketing, branding and imagine that we will always have our wits about us — when we need them. The idea of our unique brain circuitry being programmed out of existence never enters our daydreams of being rich, famous and a star in Gossip Girl.
Women are entitled to our priorities, and who am I to critique them? I don’t.
The entire subject of artificial intelligence and robotics interests me greatly. When my imagination is in high gear, I see a future where sex robots relieve women from their ‘duties’ as they describe it, to have sex with men. Women won’t need to get headaches or eat too much chocolate, or begrudgingly have sex as a favor to men.
As for males, they won’t be feeling perpetually guilty for having sexual desire and too much testosterone.
Hopefully a woman like me, one who doesn’t regard sex as a favor, will be in even greater demand, but I know that competing with a robot will be a serous challenge. After all, robots are the ideal woman, created from the consummate male fantasy, unlike me — an imperfect creation of Mother Nature.
Understand that I willingly embrace new technologies, and in my mindset, robots are the answers to many of life’s future challenges. The cuter they are, the better, in my playbook.
Nevertheless, I admit to getting ‘hung up’ on the idea that mostly men are working in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and I shared those concerns last fall in advance of an AI convocation in New York. (See If Tomorrow’s Brains Are Created by Men, Will Both Sexes Now Think Alike?)
Sasha Pivovarova by Craig McDean for Interview Feb 2010
If seems absolutely impossible to me that my female wonderfulness, along with women’s unique brain circuitry, will become part of the female brain used in AI. Are researchers actually working on two brains, or just one? These are critical questions for futurists, and Google isn’t brimming with answers.
For those of you who think this concept is part of the 23rd century, and why am I worried today, that’s just not true. NOW is the time to get the facts on the table.
Just this weekend I posted Scientists Develop Neuro-Inspired Brains.
The possibility of more ‘human like’ robots with neuro-inspired computer brains just took a major step forward with the development of an organic transistor capable of responding in a manner similar to the human nervous system.
To wrap up this post and bottom line my worst fears, if David Brooks and Chris Matthews can’t manage to ever use the pronoun ‘she’ in their conversations, and David Brooks writes a political futures manifesto only including the pronoun ‘he’ — 50 years into the second wave of feminism — why in the world will robots ever think like women?
Men will make artificial intelligence brains that think as they do: he, he, he. These Stepford women won’t take offence at the NYTimes and all will be honky dory on the planet.
Being a friend to men, I understand a certain amount of snickering going on around this technology-breakthrough, but trust me, life would be very boring if we only had Stepford robot-women for laughs.
Actions have always spoken louder than words, and I have zero confidence that women’s brains will be part of the future of artificial intelligence. I really hope that someone can calm my fears on this subject. A great first step would be for me to hear ‘she’ on TV uttered by me, decades after the girls marched down Fifth Avenue.
Trust me, it’s like swimming. Once you take the dive, a man easily becomes a pro at gender-speak. In fact, one’s vocabulary becomes infinitely more interesting and probing beneath the surface, which is where real wisdom generally lies in wait.
Sasha Pivovarova by Craig McDean for ‘Interview’ Feb. 2010If intervention is required at MIT or other artificial labs around the world, concerned women and the men who adore them must act now. OMG, I just had a terrible thought. So much AI and robotics work is going on in Japan, and we all know how the majority of Japanese men feel about women.
Earlier, I told myself that explaining my David Brooks outburst would make me feel better. At the thought of Japanese men inventing future AI brains for both men and women, it’s martini time. Anne
Fashion reverie inspired by Sasha Pivovarova, photographed by Craig McDean for ‘Interview’ Feb. 2010, inspired by Touch Puppet.
If Tomorrow’s Brains Are Created by Men, Will Both Sexes Now Think Alike?
Reader Comments (3)
As an engineering student i have to tell you we are still way behind creating human like artificial intelligence, so i think you can relax. There are even some that a true "intelligence" of a robot is not possible.
Most of robots we have are basically cosmetically human, and still very advanced but with nothing you can call real intelligence.
And what do you mean by with "women’s unique brain circuitry". So the feminism mantra that men are women besides some physical and cultural difference are basically the same, is not the real deal?.
Saying a woman brains functions differently is a big deal.
I tend to agree with Gonzalo. The concept of a division between male and female capability (a necessity if they are in any way fundamentally different) is what we're trying to get away from. Strip away the cultural and linguistic connotations and humans are humans. Perhaps the average dimensions of the structures in the brain between are different between the sexes, but I believe the overlap is considerable.
Here's a thought. Why should AI have gender at all? Its not necessary on a structural level and they're already going to be significantly different than humans, so assigning one of our cultural constructs to them seems a little presumptuous. Imagine being an AI where every other AI you meet could have any type of relationship with you. As if the whole world were bisexual, except even that concept would be meaningless.
On a theoretical level I see a lot of freedom in the world they will occupy, not the exclusivity of gender privilege. But maybe I'm just an optimist.
Hi Sam,
I'm no expert on this topic, but I've read quite a lot of research indicating that the male and female brain don't function in the same way. In my case, I apply a fundamental breakdown between myself having a very creative, dot-connecting holistic brain with the brains of male web developers, which are so linear that Anne of Carversville wouldn't exist at all in its current form, if I listened to them. I built this website myself against their advice on everything from long pages to quality information to large images. And I don't mean one or two men. I mean seven-10 across three web teams. Finally I just built the damn thing myself, learning as I went along.
Isn't there a lot of science showing differences between the two brains? I'm under the impression that the female brain has a lot more wiring.
I didn't scan the piece above again to see if I wrote this, but I was at an Intel conference about 10 years ago and the Berkeley women were furious that I brought up this topic. They agreed with you, that our brains are the same. It's the branch of feminism -- the dominant branch that wants to be like men, as good as men, etc.
My point is that I have no confidence that a largely male group of AI people will design intelligence that represents the a female way of thinking and processing information. If anyone can recommend serious research on this topic, it would be great.
I tend to make jokes of serious matters, but I have no confidence in an essentially male-brain led AI project. And this statement comes from a woman who has great respect for men. If more women were at these conferences, I would have a lot more faith that women's unique brain-processing talents will be included. I'm all for one AI brain that represents the best of both genders, but I do believe they're different presently, based on what I've read.
If a guy doesn't know what he's missing, how can he design the right AI brain? I know a key figure at MIT AI is now a woman, but they seem to be in short supply in AI -- and that's not all men's doing. Nevertheless, it's reality. Anne