Download NEW APROACHES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A GENDERED

NEW APROACHES IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:
A GENDERED PARADIGM SHIFT?
Verónica Sanz and Eulalia Pérez-Sedeño
Introduction
Some previous researches in Gender and ICT have studied the relation between gender and
Artificial Intelligence (AI) from a feminist point of view, such the broad work of Alison Adam
(1998). She accurately applies the insights of feminist epistemology to the main traditions in AI
as Symbolic AI, Expert Systems, and also to more recent approaches such as Artificial Life and
Situated Robotics.
During last decades, new approaches within AI such Soft Computing have produced what we
consider a “paradigm shift” with respect to the previous traditions. Soft Computing refers to a
collection of new computational techniques in computer science and artificial intelligence (and
many applied and engineering areas) which study, analyze, and model very complex phenomena,
those for which more precise scientific tools of the past were incapable of giving a solution.
Among the most important areas of Soft Computing are: Fuzzy systems, Neural networks,
Evolutionary computation (algotithms) and Probalbilistic reasoning.
Objectives
Folowing the approach of previous researches in Gender and AI, we will try to apply the feminst
perspective to this new approach of Soft Computing and in particular to one of its early areas:
Fuzzy systems. The concept of Fuzzy Set (also Fuzzy Logic) was conceived by Lotfi Zadeh in
1965, and it was defined as a problem-solving and control system methodology which is
empirically-based rather than a mathematical one which provides a simple way to arrive at a
definite conclusion based upon vague, ambiguous, imprecise or missing input information.
We will try to demonstrate that the conception of “intelligence” in Fuzzy Logic has strong
implications for epistemology in general (which has not been enough analysed yet), but also for
feminist epistemology since it includes some of the characteristics that feminists identify as
devalued by traditional-male-epistemology.
Hypothesis and methodology
Soft computing differs from conventional (hard) computing in that, unlike hard computing, it is
tolerant of imprecision, uncertainty, partial truth, and approximation. As feminists’
epistemologies have shown, these types of elements have been precisely denied along the
centuries, and also have been traditionally related to women. Women weren’t considered
deductive, abstract or precise but “intuitive”, bodily-related, approximate and devoted to less
abstract activities.
In this way we think this paradigm shift in AI can be interpreted in some way as a “gendered
shift”. However, this does not imply that women are the majority in these new branches of
research, although we find some as leaders of very particular research projects such as Affective
Computing (Rosalind Picard) and Social Robotics (Cinthya Breazal). In definitive, what are (or
can be), the effects of this paradigm shift in the actual relation between women and computer
science?
REFERENCES:
• ADAM, A. (1998), Artificial Knowing : Gender and the Thinking Machine. London and New
York, Routledge.
• BREAZAL, C. (2002), Designing Sociable Robots, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press
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GUADARRAMA, S. (2003) “Inteligencia: Inteligencia Artificial (I.A.)” En Nueva Enciclopedia Larousse,
suplemento IV, Planeta S.A. Septiembre 2003. pag: 454-56
PICARD, R.W. (1997) Affective Computing, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press
TRILLAS, E. (1998), La inteligencia artificial. Máquinas y personas. Madrid, Ed. Debate.
WAJCMAN, J. (1991), Feminism Confronts Technology, Pennsylvania, The Penn. State University Press.
ZADEH, L.A. (1965) “Fuzzy sets”, Information and Control 8 (3) 338--353.