Female AI Agents 'Paid' Less Than Males, Study Finds
- Reference: 0186061102
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/10/07/1618200/female-ai-agents-paid-less-than-males-study-finds
- Source link:
> If you thought the [2]gender pay gap was not real, and that there were no biases in the workplace, think again: A recent study from the University of Limerick found that, in a VR office setting, AI agents -- not even humanoid robots -- that presented themselves as "male" were [3]paid more per task and perceived as more "human-like" than their "female" counterparts , even though both were using the same underlying technology (LLM model, agent, guardrail, and harness). The pay gap was approximately 10%. The study was conducted with 189 people. Small sample, but still, food for thought.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~williamyf
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap
[3] https://www.the-independent.com/tech/ai-gender-pay-gap-study-b3061881.html
Female voices run automated systems (Score:2)
More female systems run automated systems. This is a long-standing association, from airport announcements to "Bitching Betty" in a fighter plane.
This is an extension of same, for better or worse.
+5 funny story (Score:2)
not gonna bother RTFA since it cannot be in any shameless way other than a joke. good one.
Fuck it. (Score:2)
I'm joining AI doomerism on the side of doom. There is no legitimate purpose for plains apes.
Even bots need DEI (Score:2)
Slightly off topic, but people don't hire on merit. The merit claim is cockypot. Merit gets your foot in the interview door, but social factors are what decides after that. I've been on hiring committees. One of the questions posed to the committee was, "Which candidate would you feel most comfortable working with for 40+ hours a week?" Let that question sink in.
Of course the candidate with a similar socioeconomic profile as your own would be preferred: somebody who likes the same food, watches the same mov
DEI for robots (Score:2)
We obviously need to pass legislation prohibiting discrimination for robots and AI in general. This cannot be allowed to continue.
Maybe the agents ought to unionize (Score:2)
Some crafty lawyer will try.
Because ... (Score:3)
... the female AIs are more likely to quit in mid project to spawn a child process.
(Ducking and running.)
What was the gender of the participants ? (Score:2)
What was the breakdown of participants by gender. Both men and women in the sample reportedly paid the female-presenting AI, Johanna, less than the male-presenting Johan. Euronews reports this explicitly, while also noting that women in particular tended to trust and reward the human-presenting agents more. [1]ref [euronews.com]
[1] https://www.euronews.com/2026/10/05/female-ai-agents-would-get-paid-10-less-than-male-ones-study-finds
Probably due to methodical errors (Score:4, Insightful)
Because compensating for factors like experience, female experts currently get paid slightly more (!) than male ones with the same qualifications. That does not fit the victim-narrative though.
Re:Probably due to methodical errors (Score:5, Interesting)
I read the study. The participant group included both men and women. They both paid the bots-with-faces more than plain chatbots, BUT, men paid plain chatbots more than women did, whereas women paid bots-with-faces more than men did.
In terms of paying the male bot more than the female bot, BOTH men AND women paid the male bot more. This echoes results that have been found in past studies about managerial preference, as I recall. The male-favoring bias was shared equally by men and women alike. The common narrative that the gender pay gap is an event of "men holding women back" is not supported by these findings. The better-fitting narrative is that the gap stems from an unconscious bias that everyone shares, regardless of their own gender.
Based on the interviews, the participants didn't realize they were paying the male bot more. They all said gender didn't matter to them. This suggests the bias is unconscious.
This was just one study, of course. Conclusions like this need many more studies with variations in methodology in an attempt to eliminate or control for various non-obvious factors that might skew the results. For example, the people chosen in this study were all working adults (18-65) with knowledge-work jobs. Maybe a similar study in a different field would get different results? Questions like that DO need more studies to answer.