Sir, – I use my Amazon Echo Dot voice assistant, Alexa, for all sorts of conversationally based digital tasks. On New Year’s Eve, I asked her, “Alexa, are you a feminist?”
The response was, “Yes, I am a feminist, as is anyone who believes in bridging the inequality between men and women in society.”
The answer seems like a reasonable new year’s resolution for the rest of us to adopt on a permanent basis. But if even chatbots can get the point about equality, why cannot the human side of a man-machine interaction do the same?
Real prejudice and contempt for diversity is not hardwired but conditioned and therefore learned from accepted patterns of behaviour.
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Alas, it cannot be deprogrammed away, but the question must always be asked and those patterns disrupted. – Yours, etc,
ULTAN Ó BROIN,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.