Does the gender pay gap extend to AI? New research finds female AI agents ‘paid’ less

New research from University of Limerick has found gender bias in the workplace could be replicated in interactions with artificial intelligence. The study, co-authored by Dr Mary Hausfeld of UL's Kemmy Business School, examined whether the way Artificial intelligence (AI) assistants are presented influences how people treat them in a workplace setting. Researchers placed 189 workers in a virtual reality office and asked them to complete work-related tasks with different AI assistants, including human-like agents presented with either male or female appearance. Participants were then given real money to divide between themselves and the AI assistant for completing the tasks, allowing the researchers to recreate a real-world transaction and examine how much people were willing to pay AI for its work.  AI agents with a female appearance were paid less than their male-presenting counterparts, despite using the same underlying technology, according to the research.