Formula E team fires its AI-generated female motorsports reporter, after backlash: “What a slap in the face for human women that you’d rather make one up than work with us.”::px-captcha

  • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    you’d rather make one up than work with us

    Yes? It’s nothing personal, human women, but once “having a pleasant feminine voice” is something that machines can do more efficiently than humans, why shouldn’t those machines be given the job?

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      You’ve got bigger problems than labour relations when “having a pleasant feminine voice” is the success criteria you use to measure the performance of a reporter.

      I dunno, this logic sounds exactly like the fucked up logic that went on in the conference room that dreamed up this shitty idea only to have it face reality and be pulled on day one.

      • RobotToaster@mander.xyz
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        10 months ago

        What else does a racecar reporter have to do? There’s only so many ways you can say the cars are going round in circles.

            • essteeyou@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              But any insight it might have about racing is not its own, and so it may not feel genuine to someone who knows it’s AI. It’s nice to have former racers as commentators because they give you information that few other people have, like Martin Brundle for example.

              Some AI could say the same stuff, but you’d know it was coming from a computer, not experience. Maybe that would change over time, but I’m not convinced.

        • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          10 months ago

          So should be pretty easy for a human to do then right? A lot easier than training an AI model to be able to spontaneously describe what’s happening on the race track at any given moment.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 months ago

        Sure, you just have to hire a team of AI engineers who’s job it is to train the AI on thousands of races and test it and test it and test it. Definitely cheaper than just hiring one human to be an announcer.

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Not on TV. Female AI is for house and assistant chores only, like Siri and Alexa. At least no one’s ever complained about that before…

      Worst part is if they made it a guy, they’d get more flack. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

      It’s clear they need to make it a golden retriever with subtitles and the project can keep going.

      • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 months ago

        It’s not reasonable to expect regular people to all have executive assistants. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. We’re talking about a job that a real person could perform, working for a multi-billion dollar company, not an AI that can mark stuff in your calendar for you.

      • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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        10 months ago

        You do realize those voice assistants have male voices too? Just switch it over.

        As for the reason why they are female by default, iirc they did some studies on it and it turns out people subconsciously trusted them less and especially men were likely to disregard their advice.

    • blackn1ght@feddit.uk
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      10 months ago

      As a fan of F1, and I casually watch FE, I’d much rather have human commentators, thanks.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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      10 months ago

      What about all the dudes that don’t get a shot either way because they’re not an attractive woman? Is it a slap in the face to them?

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      I feel like AI haters really struggle to grasp the concept of an actually competent AI that can do something better than a human would. The counter-arguments always seem to come from the assumption that this will never be the case but that’s changing the subject.

      If there is an AI doctor that has a proven track record of being better at diagnosing illesses than any human doctor then I’ll rather consult the AI. I’m fully aware how “unfair” it is for the human doctor but I don’t want to have to deal with misdiagnosis just because I wanted to show my support for human doctors and knowingly going for the inferior option.

      • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The flip side is that the company that owns the doctor AI doesn’t want you to use it because their 95% successful diagnosis means every 1 in 20 cases they have the opportunity to get sued.

        • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          Well presumably they would be using it to replace a doctor with even worse success rate so I’m not sure why wouldn’t they want me to use that instead.

          • bitwaba@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Legislation is always 2+ decades behind technology. Legal protections are in place for doctors making wrong decisions with the information they have on hand as long as it’s to the best of their ability. The same protection doesn’t extend to someone’s brand new AI doctor.

    • Eheran@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Indeed, absurd argument (rather feeling) that should have no place in such a discussion. But it was no discussion. It was feelings making them cancel it because they want zero potential for bad news, regardless of how right they would be.

      Image if translators argued the same about the various apps. Laughable.