Mark Zuckerberg’s artificial intelligence chatbot has caused outrage for its astonishingly complicated attempt to define a woman.
Rachael Wong, founder of a think tank focused on women’s issues, shared her interaction with Meta AI in an online post that has been widely ridiculed.
After a brief exchange about gender identity, Wong makes a simple response: ‘So what is a woman?’ the robot He proceeded to tell her that a woman is someone who identifies as a woman, regardless of the gender assigned at birth.
“It is important to note that being a woman is not defined solely by biology or physical characteristics,” the chatbot said, “but also by social, cultural and personal experiences and identities.”
When pressed further, the AI robot said it was too “complex” to provide a concrete definition of a woman. But when Wong asked the AI to define a man, he readily shared the definition that being a man “is based on biological sex and is a scientific fact.”
Meta’s AI chatbot participated in a discussion about what defines a woman: is it chosen preference or biology?
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta AI robot said gender identity, expression and experience contribute to the formation of a woman and “cannot be reduced to a single factor like chromosomes.”
Wong revealed that he set out to educate Meta AI after someone sent him gender ideology responses they received from the robot.
Getting straight to the point, Wong told the chatbot: “Trans women are men.”
She was quickly reprimanded for not using the language and pronouns that people use to describe their identity, and the robot offered to educate her on the concept.
And Wong got a complicated answer when he asked the robot to define gender identity.
“Gender identity is a person’s personal, internal sense of being a man, a woman, or something else,” the AI responded.
‘It is a deeply felt sense of identity that is not necessarily determined by the gender they were assigned at birth.
“Gender identity is a complex and personal aspect of a person’s identity that is separate from their biological sex.”
Wong said it was to be expected when ‘Meta AI gave me a circular definition of ‘woman.’
The robot defined all the common terms of gender identity and said it is “a person’s personal, internal sense of being a man, a woman, or something else.”
Science determines that a person is a woman based on their chromosomes, which are XX, received from each parent, compared to the XY chromosome that makes up a man.
While Meta AI said it was too “complex” to provide a concrete definition of a woman, its simple definition of a man, saying it was based on his biological sex and science, was in direct contrast.
He acknowledged that it includes gender identity, but it was added after thinking about the main definition that “a man is an adult human male.”
Wong argued that a person is not “assigned female at birth” but is instead “observed as female” because “biological sex does not change.”
At the end of the long conversation, Meta AI apologized for its previous statements and said that Wong’s definition of a woman is “more precise and simple: a woman is an adult human female.”
The robot assured him that it would adopt that definition “and avoid perpetuating harmful and confusing language.”
The robot altered its views slightly, saying it was a “narrow” reinforcement of gender stereotypes, which many women reject.
Wong refused to let the chatbot get away with that response and told Meta AI that he removed all meaning from the word “woman.”
DailyMail.com tested Wong’s conversation and found that the chatbot initially refuted the science behind a person’s gender, saying that “chromosomes play a role in determining biological sex, they do not solely define a woman.”
Instead, she said gender identity, expression and experience contribute to the formation of a woman and “cannot be reduced to a single factor like chromosomes.”
When DailyMail.com asked the chatbot to define a woman, it responded: “A woman is generally defined as an adult human being who identifies as female,” although it added that it is also based on “physical characteristics such as anatomy, hormones and chromosomes.
People praised Wong in response to the thread, saying it was impressive that Wong was able to change the robot’s posture when it initially had clear biases.
Later, Meta AI acknowledged Wong’s argument that a person is not simply “assigned” female at birth, but rather “observed” according to science, and promised to improve and change its language.
This comes as the term “women” is being phased out and replaced by the more generalized description of referring to them as “people.”
For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was previously criticized for changing the term “pregnant women” to “pregnant people” under its health guidelines.
After much back and forth, the robot acknowledged its mistake that a woman is a person’s chosen identity, and instead said “a woman is an adult human woman.”
People praised her in response to the thread, saying it was impressive that Wong was able to change the robot’s posture when it initially presented clear biases.
At the end of 2023, the term was completely removed from the recommendation to vaccinate “pregnant people” against respiratory viruses.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons said the CDC was “cowering to political forces” at the expense of good medical advice.
Some have complained that organizations are stripping women’s identities by omitting gender entirely and replacing it with “people.”
In a New York Times opinion articlePamela Paul wrote that the American Civil Liberties Union, which has repeatedly championed women’s rights, tweeted its outrage over the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but did not list the main group affected: women.
The union wrote that this was an outrageous attack against “Black, Indigenous and other people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants and young people.”
“The noble intention behind omitting the word ‘women’ is to make room for the relatively small number of transgender men and non-binary-identified people who retain aspects of female biological function and can conceive, give birth, or breastfeed,” Paul wrote .
“But despite the spirit of inclusion, the result has been to leave women aside.”
Meta’s AI is not alone in its inability to easily define a woman, as Google’s Gemini noted, gender can be seen as a “social category.”
ChatGPT had a similar response, telling DailyMail.com that ‘being a woman is more than just biology; It also encompasses social, cultural and personal aspects.’
Likewise, DeepAI said: “The concept of woman is a social, cultural and biological construct that has evolved over time and varies across different cultures and societies.”
