Questões de Concurso

          As new technologies take on increasingly humanlike qualities, there’s been a push to make them genderless. Apple’s Siri digital assistant unveiled a gender-neutral option last year, and when asked about their gender identities, the AI chatbots ChatGPT and Google Bard each reply, “I do not have a gender.”

     There have been concerns over gendering technology, since doing so reinforces societal stereotypes. That happens because the stereotypes commonly associated with men, such as competitiveness and dominance, are more valued than those associated with women. That is likely true, says Ashley Martin, a professor at Stanford University. “People are stereotyping their gendered objects in very traditional ways,” she says.

          Removing gender from the picture altogether seems like a simple way to fix this. Yet, as Martin has found in her latest research, conducted with Malia Mason, of Columbia Universty, gender is one of the fundamental ways people form connections with objects, particularly those designed to evoke human characteristics.

          Throughout the experiments, Martin and Mason found that gender increased users’ feelings of attachment to devices such as digital voice assistants –– and their interest in purchasing them. For example, participants said they would be less likely to buy a genderless voice assistant than versions with male or female voices.

Hope Reese. Is That Self-Driving Car a Boy or a Girl? In: Insights by Stanford Business. Internet:<http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/>  (adapted)

      In many parts of the world colonial hegemony has resulted in the dominance of the coloniser's language at the expense of native languages. The suppression of indigenous languages is intricately connected with mental health problems. Indigenous youth with less knowledge of their native language are six times more likely to have suicidal ideation than those with greater language knowledge. Language suppression impairs self-identity, wellbeing, self-esteem, and empowerment.

       Just as language extinction can affect mental health, so can reinstating a language. Aboriginal youth who are capable of speaking their native language are less likely to consume alcohol or use illicit substances at risky amounts, and are less likely to be exposed to violence. Moreover, knowledge of indigenous languages is associated with a decrease in youth suicide by 50% a year.

       The digital recording of indigenous languages might be useful for documentation, restoration, promotion, and education. Sufficient fund allocation is required to recover and store the alphabets of indigenous languages. Separate indigenous language educational institutes, in which researchers and mental health professionals can work in cooperation, are also extremely necessary. These concerted efforts might help result in the renewal of a given indigenous language and potentially reduce mental health problems.

Omar Faruk and Simon Rosenbaum. The mental health consequences of indigenous language loss. In: The Lancet Psychiatry. Internet:<www.thelancet.com>   (adapted).