AI: The Newest Boys Club goes Digital

By Amber Lin

As AI takes over our lives, from writing essays, engaging in conversations, and even recommending what we watch, buy, and believe, we rarely stop to ask: whose assumptions are shaping these tools?

Artificial intelligence is often seen as a step forward, not as a handicap. Yet, when it reinforces bias that strips women and other marginalized groups of opportunities, AI’s usage in the workplace and in professional settings should be reevaluated. 

Fundamentally, AI’s ability to make decisions comes from data sets that AI programmers feed to the machine learning process. Because humans already have naturally occurring biases, and data sets along with human trends contain inequalities as well, AI continues to perpetuate and reinforce these biases. Placing artificial intelligence with limited or no checkback becomes problematic when it means that biased decision making that occurs perpetuates stereotypes and limits the possibilities of marginalized groups, especially women. 

A study by Stanford University reports that when AI based tools were used in filtering job applications, the same information was rated higher in men’s applications than in women’s applications. These types of biases restrain and restrict women’s ability to obtain high level jobs simply because of their presented gender.

Additionally, stereotypes that AI creates in the workplace can be harmful towards creating a positive working environment for all individuals, especially women. A Stanford Business study found that when AI was used to create resumes and bios for women and men, men were described as being better workers, older and more experienced, than women were even in the same positions.

When the advanced AI at systems that your employers use to hire you or the simple ChatGPT you use to write your LinkedIn can value you as a lesser employee and person due to you being a woman, it’s clear AI’s unsupervised usage in professional settings should change.