Enactive Artificial Intelligence: Subverting Gender Norms in Robot-Human Interaction

Enactive Artificial Intelligence (eAI) motivates new directions towards gender-inclusive AI. Beyond a mirror reflecting our values, AI design has a profound impact on shaping the enaction of cultural identities. The traditionally unrepresentative, white, cisgender, heterosexual dominant narratives are partial, and thereby active vehicles of social marginalisation. Drawing from enactivism, the paper first characterises AI design as a cultural practice; which is then specified in feminist technoscience principles, i.e. how gender and other embodied identity markers are entangled in AI. These principles are then discussed in the specific case of feminist human-robot interaction. The paper, then, stipulates the conditions for eAI: an eAI robot is a robot that (1) plays a cultural role in individual and social identity, (2) this role takes the form of human-robot dynamical interaction, and (3) interaction is embodied. Drawing from eAI, finally, the paper offers guidelines for I. eAI gender-inclusive AI, and II. subverting existing gender norms of robot design.