Even female AI agents appear to get paid less than their male counterparts.
Researchers from the University of Limerick in Ireland found that gender bias in the workplace still persists in how people interact with AI models, leading to female presenting chatbots to receive less pay, they report in a study published in the journal Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction which will be presented at an upcoming conference.
In experiments, the researchers had 189 participants work in a virtual reality office place and instructed them to complete work-related tasks with a variety of AI assistants, including those that were either male or female-presenting. To make the stakes more real, the participants were given real money to divide between themselves and the AI assistants.
The result: Johan, the male AI, was paid markedly better than “Johanna,” the female AI.
