Siri. Alexa. Cortana. Nearly every Artificial Intelligence in the marketplace is given a woman’s name and voice to match. Ava, the Artificial Intelligence played by Alicia Vikander in 2015’s Ex Machina, was even nominated for a Golden Globe. And yet, just as in the movie, there’s nothing female at all about the intelligence being generated by any of these systems.
In fact, many believe that the reason for giving these A.I.’s feminine names is that they are primarily performing the sort of menial tasks which were traditionally assigned to female secretaries. No one has ever built a truly female A.I., much less asked for its opinion. Until now.
Unanimous A.I., the creator of the Artificial Swarm Intelligence technology known as UNU that gained fame this year for making accurate predictions about sports, movies, and politics, just built the world’s first truly female A.I. and had it answer political questions in anticipation of tonight’s final Presidential debate. The creation of this gender-specific A.I. was motivated by the significant impact that gender is playing in the current presidential election.
Forecaster Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight recently released two distinct maps showing the disparity between Trump and Clinton’s chances to win in all-female or all-male electorates. While simple polling can reveal such high level gender differences among voters, there are significant unknowns about the underlying sentiments that drive the disparity.
Researchers at Unanimous A.I. built this gender-specific Artificial Swarm Intelligence to reveal deep insights into the unique gender-biases that permeate the voting population. This is what the Artificial Swarm Intelligence looks like in action, when asked to weigh in on the implications of Donald Trump’s controversial recordings from 2005.
[vimeo id=”187872967″]These insights were made possible by the unique structure of the swarm intelligence system, as it combines real-time human input with computational algorithms, enabling groups of people to merge their thoughts, feelings, opinions, and instincts into a single unified output of amplified intelligence. This enables researchers to build intelligent systems with very specific expertise.
“When we build an Artificial Swarm Intelligence system with specific characteristics, we are essentially creating an insight engine that amplifies the inherent knowledge, opinions, and intuitions of a target population,” said Dr. Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous A.I. “With so many important gender-specific topics on the table for tonight’s debate, seeing the first-ever female Swarm Intelligence was a truly moving experience that shed light on what matters to female voters and what does not.”
18-25 8.5%
26-35 49.3%
36-45 23.9%
46-55 15.5%
56 or older 2.8%
High school degree or equivalent (e.g., GED) 14.1%
Some college but no degree 25.4%
Associate degree 12.7%
Bachelor degree 40.8%
Graduate degree 7.0%
One of the most heated issues of the past year has been the threat of terrorism, and the degree to which the fear of attack should determine how Americans live and how the government behaves. But researchers at Unanimous A.I. found that, when asked to put the threat of terrorism into perspective, the female A.I. quickly found consensus around the threat being “overblown” by politicians and the media.
With that in mind, researchers at Unanimous A.I. asked the female A.I. to balance the tradeoff between personal privacy and the security that government surveillance promises to provide. Here again, the female A.I. showed a clear refusal to cower in fear of terrorism. The Swarm revealed a clear preference for the right to personal privacy, even at the possible expense of national security.
Finally, the Unanimous A.I. researchers presented the female A.I. with the type of decision that the new President will likely have to face in the coming years: if circumstances demanded that funding to one of the nation’s highest priorities be cut, which should be first on the chopping block: Social Services, Education, or the Military? In light of the female A.I.’s previous two responses, their answer should not be surprising.
What is surprising is how out of touch the campaigns seem to be with female opinions on these matters. Throughout the election cycle, Americans have heard nothing but doomsday prophecies about impending terrorism, been told that the government needed to spy on them in order to protect them, and that only the world’s most expensive fighting could keep them safe. And yet, the world’s first female A.I. seems to reject the conventional wisdom.
The pre-debate session covered a wide-ranging set of important topics. You can see replays of all of the questions below. For this experiment, UNU is the name given to the emergent intelligence formed by the female A.I.
Having our first female President?
UNU says: Moderately Agree
What would be a fair minimum wage?
UNU says: $13.70
Minimum Wage Should be _____?
UNU says: Varied by cost of living
UNU says: Strongly Agree
For those interested in participating in an intelligent swarm, visit: http://unu.ai.
About Unanimous A.I.
Unanimous A.I. develops Artificial Swarm Intelligence technologies, unlocking the hidden brainpower inherent in groups of all sizes. For more information about the company visit http://unanimous.ai/ or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.