Female AI Agents Paid Less Than Male Counterparts, Study Issues Gender Bias Warning

Gender bias in the workplace is an evil that creates obstacles affecting hiring, pay, and career growth for employees. Women often earn less than men for similar, identical roles, and now it turns out that gender bias in the workplace could extend to artificial intelligence (AI) assistants. A new study by researchers from the University of Limerick found that humans working in a virtual reality office would pay male AI agents more than their female counterparts.

For the study titled, "Human-Like and Male? How AI Assistant Design Relates to Trust and Monetary Reward at Work in VR," the researchers put 189 people in a virtual reality office and had them work with AI assistants. They were given money to pay both themselves and the AI agents once they completed the tasks.

The AI agents with female appearance received 10.25 per cent less money than the male-presenting AI agents, despite both using the same underlying technology and completing the same tasks.

The findings suggested that gender biases familiar from human workplaces could be reproduced in interaction with AI, even when there is no difference in the technology.

"Our results show differences in reward allocation: more human-like assistants were paid more, and the female-presenting assistant was perceived as less human-like and rewarded less than the male-presenting counterpart," the study highlighted.

When quizzed about the difference in pay, the participants stated that gender was irrelevant.

"Overall, these results point to broader implications for choices surrounding AI embodiment in professional settings, highlighting important trade-offs," the study stated.

"Specifically, increases in human-likeness may foster trust and engagement, but they also risk introducing discomfort, miscalibrated expectations, and potentially even activating gendered stereotypes."

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Gender Bias Warning

Dr Mary Hausfeld of UL's Kemmy Business School, who co-authored the study, said the results raise important questions as AI agents increasingly become part of people's working lives.

"What is striking about our findings is that the technology behind these AI agents was exactly the same, but people did not treat them in the same way," said Dr Hausfeld.

"As AI agents become more common in the workplace, we need to think carefully about the characteristics we give them and the behaviours those choices may encourage. We don't want to inadvertently reproduce existing inequalities in a new technological setting."