Spending her Laura Bates, a feminist author and activist from London, noticed in her early 20s that young girls were obsessed with their body, fueled by marketing. Bates is a feminist activist and author based in London. In 2012 she launched The Everyday Sexism Project. The website documents and fights everyday sexism. sexismMisogyny is a global problem. We can combat it by raising awareness of insidious cases such as invisible laborReferring to women in professional settings as girls, and making comments on their clothing. In 2014, the site became a book.
Since that time, Bates has been harassed online by women who have sexually harassed them. experience You can be a victim without being aware of it deepfake pornographyThis is what inspired her to create her latest book. The New Age of Sexism and Emerging Technologies: Re-inventing Misogyny with AISourcebooks published a new edition of.
Artificial intelligence is now available to everyone, even if they are not close to their victims. “is lowering the bar for access to this particular form of abuse very rapidly,” Bates speaks to WIRED “Any person of any age who has access to the internet can now … make hugely realistic abusive, pornographic images of any woman or girl who they have screengrabbed a fully clothed image of from the internet.”
In her first-hand research, she spoke to women and tech creators who have been victims of AI, deepfake, and fake technology. She also used the chatbots and sexbots that she condemns. Sexism and the New Age Bates charts how, if AI isn’t urgently and correctly regulated by the government, it will become the new frontier of subjugation for women.
“I know people will think ‘she sounds like a pearl-clutching, nagging, uptight feminist,’ but if you look at the top of the big tech companies, men at those levels are saying exactly the same thing that I am,” Bates says, while pointing at Jan Leike. departed OpenAI was shut down last year over concerns about the company’s priorities “shiny products” As an example, safety is a concern. “This warning call is being sounded by people who are embedded in these companies at high levels. The question is whether we’re prepared to listen.”
Bates speaks to WIRED on how AI assistants, virtual girlfriends, and the environmental impact of AI are affecting women more than men. She also discusses how new technology can quickly become biased by its users and creators.
The interview was edited and condensed to make it shorter and more concise.
Your book made me realize that it doesn’t take long before new trends devolve to misogyny. Would you agree with that?
Laura Bates This is a well-worn pattern. This is a well-established pattern. We have witnessed it on the Internet, in social media, and with online pornography. When we have the privilege of having access to new technologies, a subset will almost always be tailored for harassing, abusing, and subjugating, women. This is due to the fact that technology is not inherently good, bad, or neutral. It’s encoded by its creators’ bias. The misogynistic forms that have existed in society for centuries are reflected, yet given a new lease of life. They can now reach new targets, and use new abuse methods. What’s particularly worrying about this new frontier of technology with AI and generative forms of AI in particular is that it doesn’t just regurgitate those existing forms of abuse back at us—it intensifies them through further forms of threats, harassment and control to be exercised by abusers.
