Women do not want male robots

The Ipsos Consumer Tracker, fielded on Ipsos' Omnibus platform, asks Americans questions about culture, the economy and the forces that shape our lives. Here's one thing we learned this week.

Why we asked about robot genders: Why not? I mean, you might not have thought about this before, but now that you have, aren’t you glad there’s data on it?

What we found: Robots are very much in the news with the rise of AI and automation and myriad “future-of-work” discussions around physical and virtual water coolers. Robots have often been portrayed in popular culture as having gendered features either overtly (the housekeeper in the Jetsons) or in their personalities. Star Wars’ C-3PO was a mansplaining droid if ever there was one, and there was no doubt Futurama’s Bender was a male bot. 

So what gender do people want their bots to seem? 

A plurality of both men and women would prefer their robots not appear to have a gender (Roomba for the win!). Women were more likely to prefer females and men were more likely to prefer males. But the striking stat is that men were seven times more likely (20%) than the women (just 3%) to want a male robot. Women were a bit more likely not to want a robot at all (25% vs. 17%).

More insights from this wave of the Ipsos Consumer Tracker:

AI has a PR problem with Americans

Americans want banks to do more to prevent scams

We are more satisfied with our commutes this year

The Ipsos Care-o-Meter: What does America know about vs. what does America care about?