AI looks poised to disrupt all manner of industries and jobs, but discrepancies are already emerging in how it’s being used.
Women are using generative AI much less than men, a study has found. The study, carried out by Berkely, Stanford and Harvard researchers, looked at other studies which had studied generative AI use, and respondents had also mentioned their gender. They discovered that across countries and occupations, women were using AI lesser than men.
“Synthesizing evidence from 16 studies that surveyed 100,000
individuals across 26 countries, along with new data on the gender of AI platform users, we show that the AI gender gap is present in nearly all regions, sectors, and occupations,” the study said. “Using data from two studies that offered participants the chance to use AI tools, we then show that even when the opportunity for men and women to access AI is equalized, women are still less likely to use AI,” it added.
In cohorts as diverse as Kenyan business owners, Norwegian Business students, US college students and US adults, men seemed to be using generative AI 25 percent more than women. The only cohort in which AI use was the same between genders was among US tech workers, where men and women seemed to be using generative AI at the same rate.
The study also said that web traffic to popular AI sites showed a skew towards men. “Globally, between November 2022 and May 2024, women made up only 42% of the roughly 200 million average monthly users who engaged with ChatGPT, 42.4% of Perplexity users, 39.6% of Midjourney users, and just 31.2% of Anthropic users,” it said.
Interestingly, even when men and women were given equal access to ChatGPT, men tended to use it more. The KAAS collected data on the demand for generative AI from over 17,000 Kenyan Facebook users, crucially providing both men and women equal access to try out ChatGPT. Despite equalizing access, women still used Generative AI tools
less than men. The field experiment with Kenyan small business entrepreneurs finds that women are 14% (p ă 0.01) less likely to seek AI advice over WhatsApp,” the study said.