Even female chatbots get paid less than male AI agents
Even chatbots aren’t immune from human prejudice. A study earlier this year aimed to chart how humans interact with AI at work, depending on how the agents are designed and presented. That included asking participants to work with two human-like AI assistants, one presenting as male and one as female, then judging them on trustworthiness, the quality of their work, and how much they deserve to be…
Gender presentation of AI agents appears to influence how human-like users trust them and how much they are willing to pay for their work, a new study reveals. Researchers designed two AI assistants, Johan and Johanna, with identical capabilities but different gender identities. Despite ranking both agents equally in terms of work quality and trustworthiness, participants consistently paid the male-presenting agent, Johan, 10% more than the female-presenting agent, Johanna.
Participants also perceived Johanna as less human-like than Johan, despite the AI agents sharing the same underlying language model. In a contradictory statement, many participants expressed that they would trust AI agents equally regardless of their perceived gender. Only a few acknowledged that gender presentation could impact their scoring.
The study found that human-like AI agents were trusted and paid more than visibly machine-like counterparts in various roles, including text-based chatbots and small robots.
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