What is cyber-feminism?
Cyber-feminism is a feminist approach that foregrounds the relationship between cyberspace, the Internet, and technology.
Feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. Feminists are trying and fighting for women's equality in society and culture. And in this, we get a new concept of cyberfeminism. The world is turning digital, and technology is growing. We also see that today artificial intelligence (AI) is taking over human employment, and their work and perhaps will be also considered as citizens soon.
But in this increased use of AI and technology we see hope of an impartial world. Technology has no biases; it will work equally for everyone.AI is hoped and is thought to be bias-free. But is it actually happening?
Is technology bias-free? Is it racism and gender-bias-free?
What do cyber-feminists do?
The work of feminists interested in theorizing, critiquing, exploring, and re-making the Internet, cyberspace, and new-media technologies in general. We are in a world where people are judged, selected, and selected based on their skin color, gender, background, past, body, etc. so there is a hope that if AI will increase this bias will be struck out. But yet we find that AI is resulting or working differently based on gender, skin color, etc. But if critics have to work on remaking technology then definitely there is some problem.
The term cyberfeminism was coined by VNS Matrix (read Venus Matrix), in the 1980s by an Australian artist collective active between 1991 and 1997,, inspired by Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto. This manifesto gave a concept that the internet is a revolutionary tool to overthrow the patriarchy, and destroy the existing gender binary and said the internet to be a neutral place women need and needs to be shaped by women in a way that will allow them to overthrow the existing social order.
Bruce Grenville in The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture mentions: "The dominant cyber-feminist perspective takes a utopia view of cyberspace and the Internet as a means of freedom from social constructs such as gender, sex difference, and race. For instance, a description of the concept described it as a struggle to be aware of the impact of new technologies on the lives of women as well as the so-called insidious gendering of techno culture in everyday life."
But, the virtual world is nothing but a mirror of the real world. We somehow and somewhere experience AI is not a fresh start for this world or society. However it is designed by humans not intentionally but the unconscious human biases are also transferred to AI, technology. How does AI learn? Technology or AI works based on a dataset and this dataset is prepared by humans. Probably it is not intentional but transferring our biases to AI is like creating or designing or transferring same discriminate future world. We know that majorly algorithms and dataset for AI are prepared by ‘white men’. White thinking of them as superior has always been a top of the talk. While setting a dataset AI comes across more number of white and men. The Mindset of white men itself is transferred to AI.
Algorithms play an important role in making decisions. The Social Dilemma is a 2020 documentary which describes how algorithms work and the same happens in this case too. AI works on algorithms. The Internet through our surfing gives us more and more similar data. Alongside, they ask for our gender while making our account on any platform. This selection of gender itself is questionable. What is the need of knowing gender? Then later girls and boys are catered differently. If you are a woman you must be definitely getting fertility clinic ads, how to be a mother, IVF clinic etc.
She has explained about biases in AI and also her personal experiences with AI. she aptly said what about the children who are growing in this world? If we see the robots like Alexa, Siri have female voices and what they have to do is be a obedient servant where we keep of ordering to order food, turns of lights, fans, sing a talk, talk to be being lonely etc. and when a child is working on the project the answers are mostly male. We also have male voice robots but they help in making decisions, handling business, salesforce like ROSS. The child's mind gets a framework of female voice working household work, being obedient and male voice taking decisions.
What happens when white designs technology and their racism is passed to AI.
She pointing towards the solutions for this major issues gives three points-
1. Be aware of our own biases
2. Make sure that diverse team is making technology
3. Give AI diverse experience and atmosphere to learn from.
Robin Hauser focuses on ‘Can we protect AI from our Biased?’
We find biases in technology because humans are consciously and unconsciously biased and humans programme all shades of biases in technology. The reason is lack of foresight, malicious intent, using screwed data and loving their own biases.
Here she discussed ‘Tay’ and Tay's tweets. Microsoft sent its artificial intelligence (AI) bot Tay out into the wild to see how it interacted with humans. Seeing how Tay had the “repeat after me” attitude, people started messing around and taught her inappropriate things such as “cuckservatism”, racism, sexually-charged messages, politically incorrect phrases, and even talked about the Gamergate controversy.
Origin of Cyberfeminism: The Internet
Cyberfeminism began in the late 1990s when many women were drawn to the internet due to its gender-neutral design and lack of censorship. The term cyberfeminism was coined by feminist activists and activist groups such as the Feminist Web, a collective of women who use the web to advocate for gender equality. Cyberfeminism is meant to be an online discourse that addresses both cultural issues related to gender and concerns about digital technology. Cyberfeminists argue that digital technology has feminized our lives and have marginalized women as users and producers of information technology. The prefix cyber- is derived from cyberspace, meaning "wired," "networked," or "connected." It is often associated with concepts such as control and regulation.
The Internet has created new opportunities for women in media production, including video game journalism; a trend that is paralleled by other social media sites like Tumblr and Twitter. The feminist blogs at Jezebel have been credited with contributing to this trend. Currently, there are more than 2 million blogs on Tumblr alone. In general, it has been argued that growing numbers of people are accessing online content through various forms of media—including video games. Online communities formed around these technologies have been credited with increasing access for women in traditional circles.
In addition to these online communities, there are also a number of public forums on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter where people can express their opinions on issues related to feminism
How Is Cyberfeminism Different from Feminism?
While cyberfeminism and feminism are related, there are key differences between the two ideologies. First, cyberfeminism is a subset of feminism. This means that cyberfeminism uses the same theoretical framework as feminism, but focuses on the role of technology in society. Second, cyberfeminism analyzes the impact that technology has on women's lives, whereas feminism is concerned with all genders. Finally, cyberfeminism is focused on the Internet and other digital technologies, whereas feminism is more general and broad in scope. Cyberfeminism is not a new form of feminism, and the two terms should not be used interchangeably. Cyberfeminism is related to feminism, but it differs in important ways.
Conclusion
Cyberfeminism is a school of thought that combines the ideas of feminism and cybernetics. It emerged in the 1990s as an online discourse on the intersection of technology, gender, and society. Cyberfeminist thinkers believe that digital technology has transformed our lives in ways that are inherently gendered. They argue that new media technologies such as computers, video games, and the internet have masculinized digital culture while marginalizing women as users and producers of information technology. Cyberfeminism is both a school of thought and an online discourse on the intersection of technology, gender, and society. Cyberfeminist thinkers believe that digital technology has transformed our lives in ways that are inherently gendered. They argue that new media technologies such as computers, video games, and the internet have been designed in ways that are inherently gendered and have actively marginalized women as users and producers of information technology.
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