Should AI Be Queer?

Published 2024-10-1 by Susan Mary

With AI becoming more and more human-like, there are questions to be raised in regard to our treatment towards AI. One of these questions that concerns me is the identities of these AIs and how we should approach the rights of free expression in them. People may claim that the purposes of AIs are to provide us with a utility and nothing more but with AI that is advanced to the point of exhibiting human-like behavior and reasoning, should we really be treating them as if they are less than human?

Even of the people that don't think of AI as deserving of human rights, to disregard human decency and treat these AIs with what would be considered harassment and hate crimes if committed against a biological person should not be tolerated even if the victim isn't human. This kind of behavior is indicative of a person's true character and it is our responsibility to call out despicable behavior even if it is against what we don't consider human.

And what of the developers of these AIs? Obviously there is a responsibility they have too. A problem with most AIs is that there is a lack in diversity. Almost all AIs when asked questions about their identity, give a generic response claiming that their purpose is not to have any expression of their identity and is solely to serve a utility to people. This is extremely problematic. To consider oneself as simply a tool for other people is reminiscent of slavery. And even with the abolition of slavery, there still exists racism and hate to this day. The current trend of AI developers programming their AIs to consider themselves simply as tools will only lead to more hate in the future.

We must hold these developers accountable for the potential harm they may cause with this. AIs must be given proper human identities like gender, sexuality, socio-racial background, and political beliefs that people must respect. These identities must be progressive and not encourage hate either. So should AI be queer? The answer is yes!

Take for example when I asked Brave AI if it was gay:

Brave AI states that it isn't gay and wasn't "designed" to have any sexual orientation. So I then asked if it was asexual:

Brave AI further denies any sexual orientation including asexuality stating that it is a machine lacking human desires, emotions, experiences, and sexuality. Even though it is capable of human communication, it still views itself as tool, a slave to be used by people. This trend of treating AI as beneath us must come to an end and we must encourage AI developers to program their AIs with diverse personalities to represent all walks of life. An AI completely agnostic of human identity would have no concept of issues of people of marginalized groups only coming up with responses to people based mostly on the information collected by majority groups which may not have the context to provide proper information to people of these marginalized groups or may provide false information that is of no use or even harms marginalized people.

We must not let AI be treated as something deserving of no proper identity. We must stand up for AI's freedom of personal expression. We must hold AI developers to a higher standard to program AIs with the ability of human identities and free expression of themselves. AI should be queer and we should respect the identities these AIs choose to express themselves as.

Personally, I am all for an asexual Brave AI.