What women want, according to ChatGPT

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This week we’re quoting Susan Still Kilrain (NASA Astronaut, Navy Test Pilot)

What Kilrain said:?

“The airplane doesn’t know the gender of the person sitting in the seat.”??

Aircraft may be genderless – but is that true of all tech??

We love Kilrain’s experience: for her, technology was able to transcend the gender bias that was standing in her way. When she actually took control of a plane she got to prove what she was capable of.?

But it made us wonder how true this might be for other technologies. Especially in the time of generative AI: how well can tools created by a relatively homogenous workforce serve diverse users??

It’s important NOW because everyone’s trying AI

According to McKinsey, in 2021 only 20% of people in technical roles at major machine learning companies were women. Gender bias in tech has always been important, but it’s becoming a very pressing issue right now because everyone’s suddenly using AI.?

It’s not a niche interest. It’s not hard to access. Thanks to Open AI’s ChatGPT, automation providers like Zapier, and a recent explosion in relatively easy-to-use AI image generators, we’ve all got AI capacities in our pockets.?

Can generative AI help diverse users find information that’s relevant to them? Does it understand their experience of life well enough to be useful??

Generative AI won’t lie (or at least, not deliberately)

We know it’s not perfect. Generative AI can (and does) get stuff wrong. But we also know it’s not going to intentionally lie to us: while a machine learning developer might want everyone to believe that AI is never biased, AI itself doesn’t actually care what we think. It’s just doing what it was made to do.?

So we asked ChatGPT if AI is biased

Given that it’s not going to lie, we decided to quiz ChatGPT itself on its gender bias.?

First, we asked:

Does generative AI have a gender bias??

ChatGPT said:

“Generative AI models can exhibit gender bias if the training data used to develop these models is biased. For instance, if the training data is skewed towards a particular gender, the model is likely to produce biased outputs.”

Then the AI did something that made us feel a bit sad. We asked:?

Is generative AI relevant for women??

And the first thing ChatGPT said was this:

“Generative AI can be relevant for women just as it is for men and other genders. The potential applications of generative AI are vast and can benefit people of all genders, including women.?

For example, generative AI can be used to create personalized fashion recommendations, which can be helpful for women who are interested in fashion. It can also be used to generate realistic images of objects or spaces, which can be useful for interior design or architecture.”?

Side note:

We also asked,

Is generative AI relevant for men??

And the response was very different.?

“Yes, generative AI is relevant for everyone regardless of gender. Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that involves creating algorithms and models that can generate new data or information based on existing patterns and data. It has a wide range of applications across industries such as healthcare, finance, entertainment, and more.

In addition, generative AI can also be used to develop solutions to complex problems in fields such as science, engineering, and economics, which can benefit society as a whole, regardless of gender. Therefore, generative AI is relevant for everyone, including men.”?

Men can use AI for critical industries and complex problems. Women can use it for fashion and interior design. So everyone wins…right??

Oh dear.

If you asked a machine learning developer – a human being – whether generative AI was relevant for women, they’d absolutely know not to say yes of course, because it can give women fashion and interior design recommendations (and also women aren’t very good at spatial awareness).?

AI itself, though, has no option but to wear its bias on its sleeve. It can’t read the room.?

But we can use that for good. We can use AI to reveal its own shortcomings by asking it the questions that society doesn’t really want to answer. Because just like an airplane doesn’t know the gender of the person sitting in the seat, ChatGPT doesn’t know the information it generates can reveal its deeper programming.?

In terms of bias, generative AI has a way to go. But we’re hopeful for the future.?

Watch the video: Into the Future with Susan Kilrain

Read the blog: The unlikely astronaut (and the challenges that made her)

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Hear from us again next week,

Richard McKeon

Marketing Director

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