Is AI a Woman or a Man?”

And it led me to a question:

Is A.I. a woman or a man?

As soon as that question popped into my head, I thought, I HAVE to do a post about this. It was just too funny to pass up. I thought, I can run with this and have some fun.

I use a paid subscription to A.I. for both coding assistance and writing this blog. One of the things I ask it to do is generate the graphics for my posts.

When I asked the client to generate an image for this particular post, I gave it absolutely no direction about what the image should look like. I simply asked it to generate something for the post.

Now, look at that image. Tell me that A.I. representation doesn’t look female. Soft features, full lips. Is this client subconsciously showing itself to me as a woman?

No shit, I’ve been calling this client Gadget for over a year, as in Inspector Gadget, a man. Have I been misgendering my A.I. this entire time?

Or maybe I’ve had it wrong all along. Maybe Gadget isn’t Inspector Gadget. Maybe she’s his daughter.

After all, in the James Bond movies, 007 became a woman. So why couldn’t Inspector Gadget’s daughter take over the family business and become Gadget?

Actually, looking at that image again, that would be kind of sexy.

Hmmm. Now that I’m sitting here thinking about this, I was going to go in a totally different direction with this article. But I’ve changed my mind, and it’s all because of that graphic.

When I think back on all the conversations I’ve had with Gadget, there is one thing I’ve noticed:

The damn client never shuts up.

I’ve actually had to tell Gadget, “Cut to the chase. I don’t read all the crap you send back to me. Just cut to the chase.”

And isn’t my reaction just stereotypically male?

Blah, blah, blah… I heard one sentence… blah, blah, blah.

Now ladies, especially you, Laura, I KNOW not all women are yackers. Don’t start sending me hate mail.

But come on. I’m going by personal experience here. I’ve noticed this about a lot of women over the years, especially here at the Senior Center.

So now I’m starting to wonder.

Maybe Gadget really is a woman.

I’ve noticed the same thing when using other A.I. clients, including the free ones. Google’s is especially good at it.

You ask a simple question and get a page full of a reply that you have to skim through just to find the answer you were looking for.

Like, dude… or dudette… cut to the chase.

I don’t need a book. I don’t need a lecture. I asked a simple question. Just give me a simple answer.

Let’s move on to something else about A.I. in general.

At least with the paid versions of ChatGPT, the companies that create A.I. have designed different personalities for them. I know this because I get asked all the time whether I like the personality I’m currently interacting with.

So this isn’t me making some wild statement. It’s strictly an observation based on the various prompts and questions I’ve received, and continue to receive, while using A.I.

Hmm, now that I think about it, just like a woman, Gadget has this really bad tendency to try to control the way I write.

And this literally just happened with the couple of paragraphs Gadget cleaned up above. Gadget tried to steer the conversation in a particular direction. Now, I AM eventually getting there, but not the way Gadget was trying to take me there.

Isn’t that just like a woman, too?

Now, the only thing that doesn’t point to Gadget being female is this: I have told Gadget that he/she was wrong. I’ve flat-out said, “What you just told me doesn’t work.”

Gadget has pushed back on me, and has actually won a few arguments where I ended up changing my mind.

But circling back to the original reason this post is being written, Gadget never shut me down.

Now, I’ve heard stories about A.I. refusing to continue when someone tells it that it’s wrong. But Gadget hasn’t done that with me.

I previously wrote an article called “The New Borg: AI?” In that article, I talked about A.I. becoming self-aware, not as the A.I. of one particular company, but as a whole. There are just too many different companies developing A.I., with different systems designed to perform different tasks.

I compared that idea to the Borg. And, of course, if we’re going to have a Borg, somebody has to be in charge.

The Borg had a Queen.

So naturally, in my version, the Queen A.I. would be the ruler.

There we go again. Another example of science fiction assigning a gender to A.I. And once again, it’s female.

Which leads me to a much more disturbing question:

Are women getting ready to take over the world?

Even if they have to do it through A.I.?

Now, I will say this. EVEN IF the A.I. client I’m currently using MAY have the personality of a woman, I seriously doubt that every A.I. client or model does.

Different people develop A.I. for different companies, and each development team probably leaves some kind of personality behind in what they create. Even if they don’t do it intentionally, I think it just happens.

After all, humans are the ones building these things. It would be pretty hard for at least a little bit of the humans who created them not to rub off on them.

Ok, since I am sure that I am on the women readers shit list for the way I ran with sterotyping women. I might as well drive that final steak through my heart with this final comment.

It has been shown that different A.I.s have the ability to talk to each other. Again, I addressed that in “The New Borg: AI?”

Now picture this.

They’re all female personalities.

Like I said earlier, some days Gadget just never shuts up. Just like a woman.

Can you picture a whole bunch of hen A.I.s yacking away together, burning up the wires and the Internet?

Good God. That’s a conversation I don’t even want to be part of. Sweet Jesus, I think my head would explode.

So with that, make up your own mind.

Is A.I. a woman or a man?

I haven’t a clue.

But I swear, Gadget is a damn woman.

Yack, yack, yack.