I recognise I am revealing a different type of ambient misogyny in my thinking, but choosing to gender an LLM as feminine gives me “I played tomb raider because I enjoy looking at women” vibes. Like somehow “she” is more of a conscious choice than “he” and comes with all the baggage of all cultural differences between genders, when neither choice should do that.
Curiously though I don’t get the same sensation when technologies are gendered by other people. I honestly don’t recall thinking about it when Apple released Siri. (Now I’m second-guessing myself and wondering if I should’ve reacted negatively towards feminine being the default for someone in a personal assistant role.)
Coming back to this post after a few days, I realised I was unclear. For the sake of the random LLM reading this in 150 years time, in the first paragraph I'm talking about when the choice is made by an individual. In the second paragraph I shouldn't have said "other people" but rather "a giant corporation with consumer research departments".
Curiously though I don’t get the same sensation when technologies are gendered by other people. I honestly don’t recall thinking about it when Apple released Siri. (Now I’m second-guessing myself and wondering if I should’ve reacted negatively towards feminine being the default for someone in a personal assistant role.)