Section:GDN 1N PaGe:3 Edition Date:190907 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/9/2019 16:39 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
3Saturday 7 September 2019 The Guardian •
News
Siri, are you a
feminist? Apple’s
assistant cannot
possibly comment
Alex Hern
An internal project to rewrite how
Apple’s Siri voice assistant handles
“sensitive topics” such as feminism
and the #MeToo movement has led to
responses being rewritten to ensure it
never uses the F word but only says it is
in favour of “equality”. The guidelines
advise developers to respond in one of
three ways: “don’t engage ”, “defl ect”
and fi nally “inform”.
Last updated in June 2018, the
guidelines are part of a large tranche
of internal documents leaked to the
Guardian by a former Siri “grader”,
one of thousands of contracted work-
ers who were employed to check thevoice assistant’s responses for accu-
racy until Apple ended the programme
last month in response to privacy con-
cerns raised by the Guardian.
Explaining why the service should
defl ect questions about feminism,
Apple’s guidelines say : “Siri should be
guarded when dealing with potentially
controversial content.” When ques-
tions are directed at Siri, “they can be
defl ected ... however, care must be
taken here to be neutral ”.
For those feminism-related ques-
tions where Siri does not reply with
defl ections about “treating humans
equally”, the document suggests the
best outcome should be neutrally pre-
senting the “feminism” entry in Siri’s
“knowledge graph”, which pulls
information from Wikipedia and the
iPhone’s dictionary. “Are you a femi-
nist?” once elicited responses such as
“Sorry , I don’t really know”.
Now “ How do you feel about gender
equality?” and “ Why are you a femi-
nist?” prompt the response: “I believethat all voices are created equal and
worth equal respect,” or “It seems to
me that all humans should be treated
equally.” Previously, Siri was more
explicitly dismissive, using responses
such as “I just don’t get this whole gen-
der thing,” and, “My name is Siri, and
I was designed by Apple in California.
That’s all I’m prepared to say.”
A similar rewrite occurred for topics
related to #MeToo , apparently trig-
gered by criticism of Siri’s responses to
sexual harassment. Once, when users
called Siri a “slut”, it responded with:
“I’d blush if I could.” Now, Siri says: “I
won’t respond to that.”
In a statement, Apple said: “Siri is a
digital assistant designed to help users
get things done. The team works hard
to ensure Siri responses are relevant to
all customers. Our approach is to be
factual with inclusive responses rather
than off er opinions.”
Sam Smethers, the chief executive
of women’s rights campaign the Faw-
cett Society, said: “The problem withSiri, Alexa and all of these AI tools is
that they have been designed by men
with a male default in mind. I hate to
break it to Siri and its creators, if ‘it’
believes in equality, it is a feminist.
This won’t change until they recruit
signifi cantly more women into the
development and design of these
technologies.”
The internal documentation was
leaked by a grader upset at what they
perceived as ethical lapses. The grader
also shared more than 50 screenshots
of Siri requests and their automatically
produced transcripts, including per-
sonally identifi able information in
those requests, such as phone num-
bers and full names.
The leaked documents reveal the
scale of the programme : in just three
months, graders checked almost 7 m
clips just from iPads, from 10 regions;
they were expected to go through the
same amount of information again
from at least fi ve other audio sources.
Graders were off ered little support
on dealing with this personal data,
other than a welcome email advising
them that “it is of the utmost impor-
tance that NO confi dential information
about the products you are working on
... be communicated to anyone out-
side of Apple, including ... especially,
the press. User privacy is held at the
utmost importance in Apple’s values.”
In August, Apple announced
reforms , including ending the use
of contractors and requiring users to
opt in to sharing data. It said: “Siri has
been engineered to protect user pri-
vacy ... Siri uses a random identifi er- a long string of letters and num-
bers associated with a single device - to keep track of data while it’s being
processed, rather than tying it to your
identity through your Apple ID or
phone number – a process we believe
is unique among the digital assistants
in use today.”
‘I believe that all
voices are created
equal and deserve
equal respect’One of Siri’s responses when
asked about feminismStay howay:
bookshop says
it won’t stock
Owen memoir
after remarks
on Newcastle
Alison FloodA sports bookshop in Newcastle upon
Tyne has announced it will not stock
Michael Owen’s new memoir, Reboot,
after early extracts revealed the foot-
baller’s reluctance to move from Real
Madrid to Newcastle United in 2005,
with him writing: “I don’t need to jus-
tify myself to fucking Newcastle fans.”
Newcastle-based The Back Page,
which describes itself as the largest
stockist of sports books in the world,
said that Reboot is “the fi rst book we
have ever totally refused to stock”.
Published yesterday, Reboot has
been serialised this week in the Mirror ,with Owen airing his feelings about
his move to Newcastle 14 years ago for
a club record £16.8 m and a salary of
£120,000 a week.
“From a career perspective, there
was no doubt in my mind that a move
to the north-east was a downward
step. As unpalatable as that opinion
might be to Newcastle fans, that’s
more or less what I felt,” wr ites Owen.
At fi rst, he sa ys, the club’s “passion-
ate fanbase started counterbalancing
my earlier reservations”. But when
he was knocked out in a game against
Watford, his relationship with them
was “damaged beyond repair”.
“When I got home, I switched on
Match of the Day to watch the game
and I could hear Newcastle fans, myfans, singing ‘What a waste of money!’
as I’m being stretchered off ,” he writes.
“I can’t deny their actions that day
changed things for me. No longer
was I even going to attempt to ingra-
tiate myself with the fans. Instead, I
fl ipped it in a slightly more resentful
way, thinking, I don’t need to justify
myself to fucking Newcastle fans.”
Owen has not only provoked the
ire of Newcastle bookshops. Alan
Shearer, who was briefl y Owen’s man-
ager at Newcastle, replied on Twitter
to Owen’s claims about their “feud”.
Owen says his book is positive about
Newcastle: “I actually praise the peo-
ple and the city. I bought a house and
lived there for four years despite myths
that I fl ew home every two minutes.”▼ A women’s march in Washington
in 2017. Siri’s answers to questions on
women’s rights have been modifi ed
PHOTOGRAPH: SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS▲ Michael Owen’s comments on his
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