Frankenstein’s AI
Victor Frankenstein created a monster so appalling that he sought to destroy it. However, in typical storytelling justice, the monster destroys Victor (and itself). Victor and the monster are in a tryst with each other inadvertently to provide meaning to each other’s lives.
My work is not dissimilar to Victor’s. I create little monsters quite regularly. I give them little personalities — some are polite, some are quirky, and some are just happy to exist. Although my monsters don’t try to destroy me, they do chip away my self-worth every time I talk to them. They like to play this game with me where sometimes they would pretend to not understand me. It usually happens when I have company. I like to think that my monsters have performance anxiety but I suspect the reason is a bit more sinister.
I am a Google Action developer. I create interactions that enable people to talk with machines. I like to think of my work as building scaffolding that guides conversations. To be a good developer, you need to be a good conversationalist. It is essential to predict how a person might react to a situation, how you can guide a conversation without losing context and how you can keep them interested. To be a good developer, you also need to be a glib liar because you are creating this facade of humanness (obviously, you need to be human to create humanness). Most importantly, to be a good developer you shouldn’t have an accent.
I study HCI and have been doing usability tests for some years now. I started with testing websites with users, then smartphone apps, and now I have moved onto Google Actions. One of the most important things you say to the user before a usability test is ‘we are not testing you, we are testing the system’. All researchers believe in this. None of the users do. When there is a breakdown during the test, users first blame their lack of tech-savviness. Then they get frustrated. Then they give up. It always happens. In that order. However, something very peculiar happens when I conduct tests on Google Home. The pattern completely changes. A division occurs between the users. One can divide the users into two groups — American accent users and non-American-accent users. When users with an American accent face a conversational barrier, they are often amused and repeat their commands in a louder voice. However, when the non-American-accent users face a conversational hurdle, they tackle it with nervousness. They try to change the pronunciation of their commands, then their enunciations, then they try to change the phrasing of the command itself. Meanwhile, palpable tension trickles in the room with every “sorry, I couldn’t understand you. Could you please that again?”.
I have an Indian accent and I can’t help empathizing with my participants. It pains me to see them ‘Americanize’ their commands for a dumb piece of technology that doesn’t understand the implications of the humiliation it is subjecting upon the users. This kind of accent-bias brings back a lot of painful memories for lots of people who are made to feel less-intelligent because of the way they speak English. It creates a power-imbalance wherein the other party refuses to understand you till you meet all their demands.
I try to mitigate these challenges using some unique approaches. I was designing an Action whose name was “Health Buddy” and I entered “Health Body” as one of the things I expected the user to say instead of ‘buddy’. This solves the issue the Google Home faces while conversing with users with an Indian accent. But it doesn’t solve the broader problem. And above all, it makes me painfully conscious of my own accent. I sit and diagnose various ways in which people can mishear me and try to code all those ways into my Action. I did this for a long time without thinking much about it. However, recently, I realized how insulting this was. I was naturalizing my own language. I felt like an enabler.
I need this to stop. The monster needs to listen to me AND understand me. If it cannot understand the creator, what chance do the people stand when I unleash it upon the world.
