A closer look at the Meta 2 AR headset

We were impressed with the Meta 2 augmented reality headset last year, even though we were just looking at prototype hardware. Now, the company is shipping out the final version of the Meta 2 to developers, which includes some useful upgrades. Most importantly, it now sports memory foam around the headset to make it easier to wear for hours at a time.

Meta has also been working hard on building out its custom operating system, as well as figuring out how to develop a new language of gestures for augmented reality. I had a chance to test out the shipping version of the Meta 2 at SXSW, and while it’s still not perfect, it’s the best AR experience I’ve seen yet.

Yes, it looks a bit awkward — especially with its large curved screen jutting out from the front — but the Meta 2 fit comfortably on my head. It’s a lot more stable than Microsoft’s HoloLens, mostly because there’s actually some support on top of your head, instead of just relying on a single band around the sides of your noggin. The Meta 2’s weight felt evenly distributed, and it was clear from the start that adding memory foam was a good move. It felt well cushioned around the sides of my head, which is where headsets usually end up feeling fatiguing if they’re not padded properly.

The Meta 2 also feels like a more complete AR experience, compared to the HoloLens. The big reason for that? It features a wide 90-degree field of view, whereas the HoloLens only offers a thin 30-degree FOV. That means images from the Meta 2 fill up much more of your vision, rather than just offering a sliver of augmented vision. Of course, the Meta 2 also has to be connected to a computer, while Microsoft’s headset is completely wireless. Personally though, I’d rather have a better AR image than a portable headset.

I went through a brief Meta 2 demonstration which showed off different aspects of the human brain. The image was very clear, thanks to the headset’s sharp 2,550 by 1,440 pixel resolution, and it did a decent job of letting me walk around the projected AR brain. There were points where the image started stuttering a bit, either because I blocked a sensor or the headset had trouble mapping the area around the room. The headset also had some issues recognizing when I was trying to interact with some AR components. I also got a quick glimpse at an AR presentation with the Meta 2, and while it felt a bit gimmicky, it could be a useful way to spice things up beyond a mere Powerpoint.

Sound is the biggest problem with the Meta 2 right now. It features four speakers, but they all sounded very tinny. Ryan Pamplin, Meta’s VP of sales and partnerships, says the company is currently working on improving the sound quality with some software tweaks. But to my ears, Meta might need to look into entirely new speakers, especially since it’ll be tough to wear normal headphones together with the headset.

There’s not much you can do with the Meta 2 right now, but the company hopes that’ll change as developers get their hands on units this year. And at this point, the Meta 2 serves as an effective monitor replacement. Pamplin and his team are already using the headset full-time at their desks, and the company is in the process of doing the same across more groups.

The Meta 2 is available for pre-order now for $949, and the company plans to fulfill all of its pre-orders in the coming months. If you’re interested in the headset though, you’d better get an order in soon. Pamplin says the Meta 2 will be “substantially more expensive” once it becomes widely available.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from SXSW 2017.

The Levi’s Commuter smart jacket has a ton of promise

Google’s mission with its Advanced Technology and Products group is to create innovations like Project Jacquard, which can turn objects into interactive, gesture-controlled surfaces. With the Levi’s Commuter jacket, introduced in 2016, the technology comes to life through a conductive fabric and a Bluetooth device that attaches to the garment. The connected area consists of 15 threads on the left sleeve, just visible enough for you to know where to touch to trigger actions from a paired smartphone.

You can, for example, brush your fingers on the jacket to find out what time it is, or swipe to play, pause or skip a track while you’re listening to music. There’s a companion Android app, called Project Jacquard, that lets you select what you want each gesture to bring up — and the UI is mostly drag and drop, making it extremely easy to set up. Levi’s says it’s working to add support for additional gestures later on, which could enable more ways for you to interact with its first smart jacket.

Battery life, meanwhile, we’re told is about two days, and the Bluetooth device can be easily unclipped and charged via USB. Aside from the Jacquard part of it and the black cuff, the new Commuter looks like any other piece from Levi’s’ line of denim jackets, meaning there aren’t really any trade-offs in terms of comfort and style. You can even throw it in the washing machine without a worry, so long as the cuff isn’t attached to the sleeve. In other words, no one would know you’re wearing a jacket with a sci-fi twist to it.

Levi’s is bringing the Google-powered Commuter to stores this fall for $350, and the company says it plans to use the technology in more ways eventually. Jacquard jeans, anyone?

Click here to catch up on the latest news from SXSW 2017.

What it’s like playing ‘Rez Infinite’ strapped into a synesthesia suit

At SXSW last year, Sony showed off a bunch of unusual and intriguing prototypes from its Future Lab division. In 2017, Sony’s going even bigger: a huge space called the Wow Factory has stuff from the Future Lab as well as a whole host of immersive VR experiences. I tried a couple out; the best way I an describe my reaction is confused but intrigued.

The first was space / music shooter Rez Infinite in PlayStation VR. But In addition to wearing the VR headset, I was strapped in to a “synesthesia suit” that had a host of haptic feedback sensors built into it. Once I was fully set up, I jumped into the game, and the whole thing was rather overwhelming. There’s just way more to concentrate on than there is in most games. I was in a 360-degree space trying to find all the enemies while music blasted into my headphones and the suit vibrated in time with the game. It was hard to identify exactly what the vibrations were supposed to sync up to, though. Sometimes it was music, other times shots hitting the enemy ships.

Once I stopped focusing on it and just enjoyed the game, it was all good — but I also don’t know how much the suit really added to the experience. Everyone loves Rez Infinite, and it works great in VR, and that’s about enough for me.

Across from the Rez Infinite experience was a Resident Evil booth where I was suited up in another haptic feedback outfit. This one was less complicated; it was more a vest than a full-body suit. From there, a fake but semi-realistic gun was planced in my hands, and a giant, wall-sized 3D display lit up in front of me. With my 3D glasses and automatic weapon in place, the screen lit up with a few of a ravaged city street filled with zombies that wanted to tear me to pieces.

I started blasting down the slow-moving creepers that were a good distance away, but then some dead bodies closer to me came to life — that’s when the 3D effects were put to good use. A few zombies near me “came out” of the screen as I blasted away at them, downing the menaces in the nick of time. I wasn’t so lucky when a few zombie-dogs sprinted out of the pack and attacked me. Each hit made the vest reverberate with the impact something that was amped up when a giant “boss” zombie came running down the street at me. The gun conveniently locked up and I was shredded to death, the sound effects and vibrations of the suit making it all a bit freaky.

Ultimately, both of these experiences were a bit of a gimmick, but that’s par for the course at SXSW. While I enjoyed my time gunning down zombies, though, it’s hard to top Rez Infinite.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from SXSW 2017.

NASA finds long-lost Indian lunar orbiter

India lost contact with its first lunar orbiter, the Chandrayaan-1, back in 2009. Now, NASA has revealed that the agency discovered its location in July 2016 after testing a method that can be used by future lunar missions. Chandrayaan-1 is a relatively tiny cubic probe that measures five feet on all sides, making it the perfect target for the radar experiment conducted by a team of Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists. The team wanted to find out whether a technique used to observe small asteroids can also spot spacecraft orbiting the moon.

This method relies ground-based radar, because optical telescopes can’t see anything against the bright lunar glare. Since Chandrayaan-1 was in polar orbit around the celestial body before it got lost, the team sent a powerful beam of microwaves somewhere above the natural satellite’s north pole. They used a 230-foot antenna at NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California to accomplish the task. But they relied on the 330-foot Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to detect the radar echoes that bounced back.

The researchers were afraid they wouldn’t find anything, since the moon has areas with higher-than-usual gravitational pull that could have caused the spacecraft to crash into it. However, the scientists were able to detect two different objects using the technique: one matched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s well-known path. The other was a tiny object, which crossed the beam twice — the second sighting matched the time it would have taken the Chandrayaan-1 to complete one orbit.

Now that the scientists have proven that ground-based radars can be used to track probes in lunar orbit, NASA could use them for both robotic and human missions. The technique could also be used as a safety mechanism for spacecraft suffering from communication issues in the future.

Source: NASA JPL

MacOS isn’t immune to malware! Let these antivirus apps give your system a booster shot

Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, MacOS is just as susceptible to malware as Windows 10 — it’s just that Windows 10 is a more common platform, so more malware is coded with Windows users in mind. Apple’s operating system is far from invulnerable, and new threats appear regularly, so it’s important to keep up on basic security.

More: New to MacOS? Here are 30 of the best apps available

Fortunately, there are many fantastic anti-malware platforms designed to give your Mac a booster shot against the latest viruses, adware, and ransomware. Whether you’re looking to utilize the ever-popular Avast, the simplicity of Avira, or the balanced Sophos, there are dozens of freemium products on the market to secure your computer against potential threats. Combine one or more with a little caution, and you’ll have plenty of peace of mind. Below are some of our favorite anti-malware suites.

Things to do prior to installing antivirus software

Stay up to date — Keeping your Mac updated with the latest software is essential. When there’s a system update, make sure you pick it up as soon as possible, and make sure all your other apps stay up to date as well. Security patches are rolled out pretty regularly for most MacOS applications. Apple has always been keen to pinpoint potential threats, often issuing incremental updates that address system vulnerabilities as quickly as possible. Assuming you’ve opted for automatic updates, install them as their notifications arise, or manually install the updates from within the Updates panel located on the right side when viewing the main App Store window.

Turn on your firewall — Although not for everyone, turning on the built-in firewall can help secure network traffic to and from your system. If you haven’t done so already, navigate to the main System Preferences panel, select the Security & Privacy option, and click the Firewall tab located at the top of the window. Afterward, click the Turn On Firewall button, and you’re all set. Under Firewall Options, you can block connections from individual applications on your system, as well as give certain apps a pass.

More: Turn your bug-finding skills into more cash as Google, Microsoft hikes bug-bounties

Encrypt your data — MacOS may already secure important files on your behalf, but setting up FileVault’s full disk, XTS-AES 128 encryption adds yet another level of protection to your entire drive. It essentially prevents unwanted users from seeing and copying your files — setting a master password for your machine in the process — and allows you to specify which user accounts are allowed to unlock the encrypted drive. To turn on FileVault, navigate to the main System Preferences panel, select the Security & Privacy option, and click the FileVault tab located at the top of the window. Afterward, click the Turn on FileVault button, note the recovery key — or allow Apple to store the password on your behalf — and restart your computer when prompted.

Avast! Free Mac Security

Avast! is one of the most popular security suites available, and it’s easy to see why. It’s effective and free for non-commercial use, providing on-demand tools for quickly performing full-system malware scans as well as sifting through specific email threads, attachments, and various web activities (i.e., webpages, downloads, and Java scripts). Furthermore, it offers drag-and-drop scanning for individual files and phishing protection, along with the ability to scan external drives and attached volumes for potential infections.

More: Our quick-hit guide to password protecting a folder

The application’s interface is straightforward and self-explanatory, too, and features a navigational pane on the left that consists of five primary buttons and a real-time graph that aggregates shield activity and allows users to quickly check the overall stats of their computer. The free version also offers to install two other programs during installation: Avast Online Security ($40 per year) and Avast SecureLine VPN ($60 per year). Neither are necessary for detecting and removing malware, however, so pay attention during installation if you don’t want them.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for Mac

Windows users have long turned to Malwarebytes’ free version, affectionately known as MBAM, as a backup for always-on malware software. If you’re a Windows user, it’s a great tool for scheduling deep-scans of your system. The Mac version started as an adware removal tool, but as of today, it’s also a fully-fledged tool for protecting your machine against malware. Plus, it’s just as effective in MacOS as it is in Windows.

The program is the creation of Thomas Reed, who blogged about Mac spyware and security for years at The Safe Mac. While running the site, Reed made a simple tool — Adware Medic — to remove the adware he so often wrote about.  Malwarebytes brought Reed onto the team, and re-branded Adware Medic as Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for Mac. The tool is just as fast as before, and still free, but it has a new name and a bigger team behind it.

Using the program couldn’t be easier. Just launch it, hit scan, and the software will quickly let you know if you’re infected with any Mac-specific malware. This is not an always-on solution, though, and is thus more suited for performing deep-scans and ridding yourself of particularly pernicious malware. It doesn’t provide “real-time” protection like Avast! or some of the other options on our list, either.

Sophos Antivirus Mac Home Edition

If offering an entire history of Mac malware dating back to ’82 isn’t evidence of a developer on top of its game, we don’t know what is. Straddling the line somewhere between necessity and excess, Sophos offers all the basic utilities you’ve come to expect from quality antivirus software, and a whole lot more. The utility offers custom, on-demand, and scheduled scans for specified files, folders, and drives, along with additional tools for deleting and quarantining any software Sophos deems a potential threat.

The software even incorporates a real-time protection features that will quarantine unknown files that are merely exhibiting suspicious behavior. Although the program has a tendency to scan slower than most, it’s fairly lightweight, and non-obtrusively performs vital background tasks while barely leeching or exhausting your system’s resources.

Despite its robust feature set, Sophos manages to cram all this functionality into a compact interface. Initiating a full-system scan can be done directly from the top of main menu, and you can configure exemptions quickly from easily navigable menus. Additionally, the malware definitions are constantly being updated, ensuring the program is never without the latest knowledge of potential threats. It’s one of the most hands-off antivirus programs on the market, and as such, sits among the best.

Bitdefender Virus Scanner

Built upon Bitdefender’s award-winning anti-virus engine, Bitdefender Virus Scanner features a host of scan options, allowing you to quickly perform deep scans of your entire system, or those targeting specific locations. If you grant it access, the streamlined program even provides an option for scanning critical locations — such as your Mac’s launch agents and the entirety of your system library — thus allowing you to bypass lengthier scans when pressed for time. Moreover, it automatically updates with Bitdefender’s hourly malware definitions prior to scanning, while providing a quick means for blacklisting specific locations from system scans.

Other features are limited, though. Bitdefender Virus Scanner automatically tries to disinfect and quarantine suspicious files it comes across, and though the feature is not unique to Bitdefender’s offering, the software can also quickly search for malware within various archives and file types (PDF, PKG, ZIP, RAR, etc.). Said functionality is housed within a sleek window that showcases the three scanning modes in addition to a sole Update button, the latter of which can be used in lieu of automatic updates.

Who says drones have to be land or air-based? Norway is testing autonomous boats

Why it matters to you

We’ve heard all about self-driving cars and are familiar with drones. But what about their sea-based counterpart? Those are being tested in Norway.

Autonomous cars are all the rage these days, but autonomous boats? While automobiles are certainly among the most popular forms of transportation, they’re not the only form. As we’ve begun to normalize the notion of a driverless future, other methods of transportation are looking to adopt the same concept. In Norway’s Trondheim Fjord, you can now find a testing site for water-based drones. Because land and air-faring machinery shouldn’t be the only ones having autonomous fun, right?

Despite officially opening late in 2016, it’s taken a while for business, which is to say testing, to pick up. But now, companies like Kongsberg Seatex, Marintek, Maritime Robotics, and Rolls-Royce Marine are all on-site to start putting their robotic and self-driving technologies to the open water.

More: PassivDom makes totally autonomous homes capable of withstanding zombies

Thus far, the fjord has seen tests for a variety of purposes, including navigation, collision avoidance systems, operational safety, and risk management projects. And as these tests continue, we may be drawing nearer and nearer to a human-less shipping industry, as large boats find their way across the ocean without the need for a crew. Perhaps this could even mean the automation of the fishing industry, or a whole host of other sea-based activities.

“As far as we know, there are no such test sites of this kind in the world so the Norwegian Coastal Authorities are taking the lead in a changing maritime world,” Kongsberg Seatex President Gard Ueland said last year upon the site’s opening, reports Engadget. “We will also see technology that has the potential to enable fully autonomous cargo vessels. Much of this will come from Trondheim, thanks to the unmatched maritime expertise here and our autonomous vehicles test bed.”

So get ready friends. Remote-controlled ships may soon no longer be toys that you sail in the park. Rather, they could be the transport that gets us from one country’s coast to another.

Socialize from the comfort of your couch with Rooms 1.2 on Gear VR

Why it matters to you

As exciting as virtual reality may be, it often seems to be a rather lonely experience. Oculus is looking to change that.

Last year, in an effort to introduce even more people to social VR experiences, Oculus began to roll out support for its highly anticipated Rooms and Parties features to the Gear VR. First introduced at the Oculus Connect event earlier in 2016, Oculus Rooms and Parties were said to be coming to the Rift headset in 2017, and now, Oculus had made good on that promise.

With the first iteration of Oculus Rooms, you could join your friends in VR and watch movies (and cat videos) together from anywhere in the world. Well, anywhere with an internet connection, at least. Using a Gear VR setup, you could share spaces with friends, interact, hang out, and even stream live from VR.

“The first wave of VR was all about the magic of presence, the immersive sense of actually being inside a virtual space. The next step is to let you feel that same sense of presence with other people in VR,” said the Oculus Team.

But this week, the company has launched Rooms 1.2, which allows you to do even more with your friends and family members in virtual reality, as well as Oculus Events, which lets you organize your experiences. With Rooms 1.2, VR enthusiasts can now watch 360-degree content with a wider community. Thanks to the “collective viewing dome,” which can be found in the middle of any shared environment, you and your friends can watch 360-degree videos on Facebook together.

More: Samsung’s new Gear VR is sleeker, blacker, and better than ever before

Also receiving an update is the search function for Oculus Rooms. Beginning this week, you can search for Facebook content using naught but your voice. With a new feature being dubbed Oculus Speech Recognition, your speech becomes your key to just about everything within Oculus.

The VR company’s parent company Facebook also had an announcement last week, noting that it’ll soon be rolling out VR Facebook Livestreaming by way of the Gear VR headset. Over the course of the next few weeks, your Gear VR software will add a “Livestream to Facebook” option, allowing you to share VR games directly over the social network.

Of course, there’s also the Parties feature, which hit the Gear VR last year. Using the new functionality, you’ll be able to make voice calls from VR, and even join each other in compatible multiplayer VR games like Dragon Front and Drop Dead.

There’s not much to the Parties functionality, aside from Rooms and a few games, but as Oculus is fond of pointing out, this is just the beginning. We’re still in the era of silent film when it comes to virtual reality, and with competition between the Rift and HTC Vive heating up, 2017 is poised to be the year of VR.

“This is just the beginning of social VR. We’ll continue building fun ways to share presence and take social interactions in VR to a whole new level,” the release from the Oculus Team reads.

Article first published in December 2016. Updated on 03-12-2017 by Lulu Chang: Added updates about Oculus Rooms, Events, and Facebook livestreaming. 

Alexa, why aren’t you a dude? How female digital assistants reinforce stereotypes

We find ourselves surrounded by helpful assistants these days, from Apple’s Siri to Microsoft’s futuristic Cortana to Amazon’s Alexa to … whatever the designation for “OK Google” is — and every one of them defaults to a female persona. In response, a lot of writers are asking if the tendency of postmodern digital assistants to skew female is a dangerous thing for society.

Sure, you can change Siri to a different gender and even a different accent — I was carrying around an Australian bloke for a while before switching to a Brit, preferring a digital Alfred Pennyworth — but digital assistants skew female and stay that way. It’s a perception that some think might be having a negative effect on society in training everyone to think of women as assistants, rather than as whole human beings and equals.

More: “Human, the milk has spoiled.” Soon Alexa will run your smart home, and your life

There are other factors at play as well. Some researchers believe we as human beings have a natural inclination to prefer a female voice. Historians and sociologists often point to history as a touchstone, hypothesizing that the preponderance of female voices in navigation devices dates back to World War II. Still others draw a direct line from the portrayals of women in Mad Men, looking back on a time when women were often secretaries and telephone operators. Just because you can find a historical precursor doesn’t make it okay to perpetuate a stereotype.

There’s even a school of thought that thinks the dominance of female voices is due to the instances of male robotic menace in popular media: think HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey or W.O.P.R. from Wargames. (Some might argue that GLaDOS from the videogame Portal is way scarier than any movie robot.) This one is also easy to dismiss, thanks to the strange, fascinating portrayals of female A.I.s in the films Hal and Ex Machina.

The linguistic engineers at Google and Apple must face a lot of hurdles; women and men not only sound different when they speak, but they also use different words. This can create a linguistic version of digital design’s “uncanny valley”: an artificial voice that sounds female, but uses male-sounding phrases, won’t seem authentic to the human speaking to it. This leads to an exchange where the user is focused more on the sound of the voice of the digital assistant than the information being relayed.

Nevertheless, digital assistants are certainly based on millions of dollars in market research, and the Silicon Valley giants who funded that research aren’t releasing statistics anytime soon. It’s certainly purposeful in design, as evidenced by the fact that A.I.s like Siri have built-in responses to resist gender identification. If you ask Siri what gender it is, the response is generally, “I am genderless, like cacti, or certain species of fish,” or a variation.

Women and men not only sound different when they speak, but they also use different words

Conversely, both Apple and Google have both stated a desire to make their digital assistants more sophisticated, giving users a sense of a relationship rather than a device. It’s a potentially troublesome phenomenon as the makers of anthropomorphic assistants to accent non-threatening and subservient qualities to achieve social acceptance. Scarier still is the idea that digital assistants are not only reflecting gender bias, but causing it. Kids are already anthropomorphizing their robot friends, and also bossing them around — a behavior parents don’t want them to extend to actual people.

Killer robot expert, Daniel H. Wilson, a roboticist and the author of Roboapocalypse and How to Survive a Robot Uprising, agrees with the flood of responses that urge caution as artificial intelligence gets more and more sophisticated.

More: The creators of Siri are now on a mission to destroy it

“The preponderance of female virtual assistants is proof that robots can be a reflection of human stereotypes,” he told Digital Trends. “As we continue to create technology that stands in for people, it’s crucial that designers work to avoid perpetuating human prejudice through their creations.”

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Gender bias isn’t a new phenomenon and it shows up in surprising ways — it’s the reason your kid couldn’t buy a Rey action figure when The Force Awakens came out, or why Tony Stark replaces his trusty A.I. Jarvis with a “Girl Friday” — but it is something that A.I. developers should consider as they continue tweaking their digital assistants. Dissenting voices, writers like Jessica Nordell and Soraya Chemaly, are asking the right questions.

“Many people dismiss issues like these, which are fundamentally about representation and its impact on self-image, ambition, and human potential, as inconsequential, but they are mistaken,” writes Chemaly at Role Reboot. “Naming and designing products in these ways is both a symptom of bias and a cause, and steps should be taken in the design of new technology to understand how social inequalities are related to technical ones.”

Over at the New Republic, Nordell also has some sage advice: “At the very least, the default settings for these assistants should not always be women,” she writes. “Change Viv to Victor, and maybe one fewer woman will be asked to be the next meeting’s designated note-taker.”

Alexa, why aren’t you a dude? How female digital assistants reinforce stereotypes

We find ourselves surrounded by helpful assistants these days, from Apple’s Siri to Microsoft’s futuristic Cortana to Amazon’s Alexa to … whatever the designation for “OK Google” is — and every one of them defaults to a female persona. In response, a lot of writers are asking if the tendency of postmodern digital assistants to skew female is a dangerous thing for society.

Sure, you can change Siri to a different gender and even a different accent — I was carrying around an Australian bloke for a while before switching to a Brit, preferring a digital Alfred Pennyworth — but digital assistants skew female and stay that way. It’s a perception that some think might be having a negative effect on society in training everyone to think of women as assistants, rather than as whole human beings and equals.

More: “Human, the milk has spoiled.” Soon Alexa will run your smart home, and your life

There are other factors at play as well. Some researchers believe we as human beings have a natural inclination to prefer a female voice. Historians and sociologists often point to history as a touchstone, hypothesizing that the preponderance of female voices in navigation devices dates back to World War II. Still others draw a direct line from the portrayals of women in Mad Men, looking back on a time when women were often secretaries and telephone operators. Just because you can find a historical precursor doesn’t make it okay to perpetuate a stereotype.

There’s even a school of thought that thinks the dominance of female voices is due to the instances of male robotic menace in popular media: think HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey or W.O.P.R. from Wargames. (Some might argue that GLaDOS from the videogame Portal is way scarier than any movie robot.) This one is also easy to dismiss, thanks to the strange, fascinating portrayals of female A.I.s in the films Hal and Ex Machina.

The linguistic engineers at Google and Apple must face a lot of hurdles; women and men not only sound different when they speak, but they also use different words. This can create a linguistic version of digital design’s “uncanny valley”: an artificial voice that sounds female, but uses male-sounding phrases, won’t seem authentic to the human speaking to it. This leads to an exchange where the user is focused more on the sound of the voice of the digital assistant than the information being relayed.

Nevertheless, digital assistants are certainly based on millions of dollars in market research, and the Silicon Valley giants who funded that research aren’t releasing statistics anytime soon. It’s certainly purposeful in design, as evidenced by the fact that A.I.s like Siri have built-in responses to resist gender identification. If you ask Siri what gender it is, the response is generally, “I am genderless, like cacti, or certain species of fish,” or a variation.

Women and men not only sound different when they speak, but they also use different words

Conversely, both Apple and Google have both stated a desire to make their digital assistants more sophisticated, giving users a sense of a relationship rather than a device. It’s a potentially troublesome phenomenon as the makers of anthropomorphic assistants to accent non-threatening and subservient qualities to achieve social acceptance. Scarier still is the idea that digital assistants are not only reflecting gender bias, but causing it. Kids are already anthropomorphizing their robot friends, and also bossing them around — a behavior parents don’t want them to extend to actual people.

Killer robot expert, Daniel H. Wilson, a roboticist and the author of Roboapocalypse and How to Survive a Robot Uprising, agrees with the flood of responses that urge caution as artificial intelligence gets more and more sophisticated.

More: The creators of Siri are now on a mission to destroy it

“The preponderance of female virtual assistants is proof that robots can be a reflection of human stereotypes,” he told Digital Trends. “As we continue to create technology that stands in for people, it’s crucial that designers work to avoid perpetuating human prejudice through their creations.”

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Gender bias isn’t a new phenomenon and it shows up in surprising ways — it’s the reason your kid couldn’t buy a Rey action figure when The Force Awakens came out, or why Tony Stark replaces his trusty A.I. Jarvis with a “Girl Friday” — but it is something that A.I. developers should consider as they continue tweaking their digital assistants. Dissenting voices, writers like Jessica Nordell and Soraya Chemaly, are asking the right questions.

“Many people dismiss issues like these, which are fundamentally about representation and its impact on self-image, ambition, and human potential, as inconsequential, but they are mistaken,” writes Chemaly at Role Reboot. “Naming and designing products in these ways is both a symptom of bias and a cause, and steps should be taken in the design of new technology to understand how social inequalities are related to technical ones.”

Over at the New Republic, Nordell also has some sage advice: “At the very least, the default settings for these assistants should not always be women,” she writes. “Change Viv to Victor, and maybe one fewer woman will be asked to be the next meeting’s designated note-taker.”

Truly driverless tests (those without humans) may soon take place in California

Why it matters to you

California’s move to remove the driver altogether is a large, albeit controversial, leap towards a truly autonomous future.

Sure, we’ve been testing self-driving cars for years now, but we haven’t really been testing them. After all, the whole point of having driverless technology is to see how a car would truly behave sans driver. Actually, no — sans human intervention altogether. But soon, we may be putting autonomous technology to the real test. California, the largest car market in the U.S. and the state that has been friendliest thus far to self-driving testing, says that it plans to allow autonomous cars take to public roads with no backup human driver by the end of the year.

Buckle up, kids. This could be a bumpy ride.

As it stands, driverless cars must have some flesh and blood being in the vehicle while they’re being tested, just in case something goes wrong. But now, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles is looking for public feedback on proposed regulations that would not only allow for 100 percent driverless testing, but would also nix the requirements for traditional car controls like steering wheels and pedals (really, those become superfluous once you take out the human element).

More: This camera that sees in real time could mean safer driverless cars and drones

Over the course of the next 45 days, the public is welcome to comment on the new guidelines. After April 24, there will be a public hearing to further discuss next steps, and the final rules ought to be completed by the end of 2017. Should things go according to plan, California transportation secretary Brian Kelly says that self-driving cars could soon go on sale in the state.

27 companies already have permission to test autonomous cars on public roads — there’s BMW, Tesla, Alphabet, and Baidu, along with a number of startups that are all looking to make your morning commute something of a snooze fest.

But don’t worry — we won’t be taking humans completely out of the equation. Any self-driving car must come with a remote operator who would be able to monitor the vehicle’s operation and communicate with those taking a ride. But hey, sometime soon, those passengers may not have to know how to operate their own vehicles. At least, not in the traditional sense.