There Are No Girls on the Internet - Women Use AI Less Than Men at Work. Is That a Bad Thing？

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00:00:50.080 I survived nine months in captivity,

00:00:53.240 and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:00:58.760 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:01:02.380 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:01:09.920 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

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00:01:53.600 Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

00:01:55.340 And Sean Clemens.

00:01:56.700 We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.

00:01:58.860 Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.

00:02:04.740 The show is famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on.

00:02:10.880 We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen.

00:02:15.840 Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:02:25.340 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:02:33.800 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:02:39.500 According to a growing body of research, women are using AI in the workplace less than men.

00:02:45.060 We're less likely to experiment with it and more likely to be skeptical of AI, too.

00:02:50.200 But does this mean that women are falling behind economically, financially, and professionally?

00:02:55.340 Or are we actually just asking the wrong questions?

00:02:59.000 To dig into all of this, I'm joined by my friends, Samantha and Annie, over at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You,

00:03:05.820 to look at what the research says and what it leaves out about women, AI, and work.

00:03:15.580 Hey, this is Annie.

00:03:16.800 And Samantha.

00:03:17.520 And welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You, a production of iHeartRadio.

00:03:25.340 And today we are once again so happy to be joined by the incredible, the irreplaceable, Bridget Todd.

00:03:35.340 Welcome, Bridget.

00:03:36.300 Thanks for having me. So lovely to be back.

00:03:39.880 Yes, thank you so much for being back.

00:03:42.400 You and I were chatting about how stressful these times can be.

00:03:46.060 So the holidays, those times being.

00:03:49.660 So thank you for making the time.

00:03:51.840 We always love talking to you.

00:03:54.380 How are you, Bridget?

00:03:56.080 How have you been?

00:03:57.160 I'm not bad.

00:03:58.320 We were talking off mic about how it is a known issue with me.

00:04:01.760 I'm a Grinch.

00:04:03.020 I don't like the holidays.

00:04:05.020 When people ask, you know, this time of year, people are like, what are you doing for the holiday?

00:04:09.660 I like my fur.

00:04:11.500 I can feel my fur go up.

00:04:12.860 You know, I just don't like it.

00:04:14.000 My heart beats a little bit faster.

00:04:16.140 And I just find the holiday season extremely stressful.

00:04:21.200 And especially when you're someone who is self-employed, it's like, hey, you know, the work that you usually do.

00:04:26.480 What if you did that work plus a week's worth of work on top of it and then that'll buy you a week off?

00:04:34.160 What will you be doing with that time?

00:04:35.600 Going to see your family, notably not stressful activity.

00:04:39.280 It's like I just find it like a stress sandwich, essentially.

00:04:42.720 I can't handle it.

00:04:43.640 I cannot hang with the holidays.

00:04:44.760 well as i said samantha you and samantha would agree on this i mean i also think they're very

00:04:54.480 stressful i yesterday we had a we went to the office for a sminty team meeting we go like

00:05:01.480 samantha and i go once a year and our our producer christina was like how are you and i was like

00:05:07.440 like i'm so tired just a deep sigh yeah and then it's the end of the year it just

00:05:16.940 i just always feel like it's like everything um catching up with you all of the year

00:05:24.320 it's been a heavy year it's something about like by the time it hits december i'm just so

00:05:30.080 freaking done just done spent yeah and then you have the new year

00:05:35.640 barreling in on you and you're like well it's still gonna be rough but it has all these

00:05:42.260 expectations of maybe something will change and not really yeah the new year I'm actually okay

00:05:50.060 with because you get to have those couple of days where you buy a new journal and some new pens and

00:05:55.200 you for a brief moment you're like this is gonna be my year this is gonna be the year that it all

00:06:01.100 I get it all together.

00:06:02.760 It doesn't usually last.

00:06:03.820 For me, I usually get about a week out of that.

00:06:05.880 But you get that week, which is not bad.

00:06:08.840 And you and Samantha did bond over markers last time.

00:06:12.060 Oh, yeah.

00:06:13.020 I got a new set.

00:06:14.300 I was gifted a new set, Bridget, just to give you an update.

00:06:17.260 How are they writing?

00:06:18.600 I had to get used to it because it was a lot more free-flowing than my previous one.

00:06:24.100 So I had to practice with them so I didn't mess up my tiny coloring books.

00:06:28.340 a good set of pens a good set of markers it really will have you believing this is going

00:06:34.280 to turn everything around if for a split second i was like i can color within the lines and then

00:06:39.820 i was like no i cannot well the topic you have brought today for us bridget is so so timely i've

00:06:49.840 been thinking about this because i mean it's hard to escape but also you get to the end of the year

00:06:55.200 And you have like Miriam Webster chooses their word of the year and it's slop as an AI slop.

00:07:01.040 And then you have time chooses their persons a year.

00:07:04.200 And it's like the architects of AI and it's like all dudes.

00:07:09.160 And yesterday when we were at the office, we were having kind of a team meeting and it came up.

00:07:16.680 We were talking about AI and our jobs.

00:07:19.080 And what does that look like?

00:07:21.180 So what are we talking about specifically today, Bridget?

00:07:24.280 Today, we are talking about the reality that women are using AI tools a lot less than men in the workplace.

00:07:31.860 There is a definite, well-studied, well-documented gender gap when it comes to the usage of AI.

00:07:38.760 And I feel you because I think as a podcaster especially, but any kind of creative,

00:07:44.560 the first conversation that comes up when it's like a bunch of podcasters together is,

00:07:48.580 are you using AI in your work? How are you seeing AI show up?

00:07:51.320 Or people asking, are you afraid of AI?

00:07:54.780 Do you see AI taking your job one day?

00:07:57.340 Like, you won't have a job.

00:07:58.420 People will be listening to AI podcasts, all of that, right?

00:08:01.300 Those conversations are everywhere.

00:08:03.200 And I think oftentimes those conversations can be grounded in a kind of hype.

00:08:08.840 And so I think the fact that AI is not being adopted equally by people of all genders at the same rates is pretty interesting.

00:08:17.640 So I wanted to talk through what we know about the data when it comes to the gender gap in AI.

00:08:23.420 But I think I might be coming at this from a little bit of a different place, right?

00:08:27.820 You know, in a lot of the research, they automatically assume two points that I want to call out early that I'll return to. 1.00

00:08:35.740 One, women adopting AI less is going to be bad for women.

00:08:39.880 I'll talk about this later, but I don't know about treating that like a foregone conclusion.

00:08:44.320 And then this is kind of an offshoot of something that I hear a ton when talking about AI.

00:08:49.900 AI is inevitable.

00:08:51.540 If you don't get with the program, you're going to be left behind.

00:08:54.700 I have people who tell me that not being into AI right now is like not using email.

00:09:01.860 You know, it will be the same kind of thing in a few years.

00:09:04.680 And, you know, if women are adopting it less, the idea that we're going to be less employable, less competitive, making less money overall.

00:09:11.820 And so I want to be clear that I don't really have the answer here, and I want to look at what the research says. But I don't like this idea that frames widespread AI adoption as an inevitable thing that everyone is going to be doing because it really doesn't leave a lot of room for criticism around the way that AI is being adopted.

00:09:31.840 that it's just repeating, it's inevitable, it's inevitable, it's inevitable, get on board.

00:09:35.520 I do think that when it comes to adopting any new technology in this way,

00:09:39.980 we shouldn't just be being told to get on board, it's inevitable,

00:09:43.720 just cram it down people's throats, especially when people are saying,

00:09:47.120 hey, maybe we don't actually like this technology.

00:09:49.600 Hey, maybe this technology isn't good, right?

00:09:52.380 I love technology.

00:09:53.260 I'm an advocate for knowing the basics of all kinds of technology.

00:09:55.980 But if a technology is showing itself to be ineffective, biased, problematic, full of lies,

00:10:00.460 actually adds work to your plate,

00:10:02.600 I don't know that we should be telling people,

00:10:05.260 get on board with it, it's inevitable,

00:10:06.800 if that's actually what they're experiencing, you know?

00:10:09.540 Yes, yes.

00:10:11.400 And this has come up a lot at our office of the,

00:10:16.160 at least right now, it seems to be adding more work.

00:10:18.360 It's not like actually helping.

00:10:21.480 But you're told like, no, it's going to really help you out

00:10:24.840 and streamline things.

00:10:25.940 I have to say I had not considered this gender gap in AI usage.

00:10:31.980 So I'm really interested about the research that you found.

00:10:36.020 Yeah, let's get into it.

00:10:38.340 So I took a look at some of the studies and they all basically confirmed that women are using AI in the workplace a lot less than our male counterparts.

00:10:46.600 Let's look at a meta-analysis called Global Evidence on Gender Gaps in Generative AI published in the Harvard Business Review.

00:10:52.440 So they took a look at 18 surveys and studies covering 143,000-plus individuals across many countries, sectors, and occupations.

00:11:00.640 They also combined this survey data with internet traffic and mobile app download data for major generative AI platforms like Claw and ShackGPT, platforms that have hundreds of millions of users.

00:11:11.780 They found a large, nearly universal gender gap.

00:11:16.040 Here's what they found.

00:11:17.400 They found that the gender gap in generative AI usage is global, persistent, and not fully

00:11:22.500 explained by access or occupation, pointing to some deeper social, cultural, and institutional

00:11:28.160 frictions.

00:11:29.080 So overall, it just seems like women are not the ones when people are saying, it's inevitable, 0.65

00:11:34.700 get on board, you got to use it.

00:11:35.980 It sounds like, by and large, that is not coming from women.

00:11:40.940 I'm curious, do these findings surprise you?

00:11:44.960 Like as women in media, as women in tech and podcasting, like, is this surprising information?

00:11:51.940 For me, it's not.

00:11:53.220 I don't think I'd ever clocked it until I was looking at your outline.

00:11:57.760 But once I looked at the outline, I was like, yeah, yeah, because most people I know who

00:12:03.180 are into AI are men and they usually have a very like, but it's this cool technology

00:12:08.860 thing about it.

00:12:10.140 and i i can't say i have really anyone i can think of but as a woman that's like that

00:12:17.500 and i i mean we're going to go over some of the reasons why this is and i thought i thought a lot

00:12:22.880 of them were interesting but uh they did resonate with me and i thought like yeah that makes sense

00:12:29.480 like i get i can't why there's a hesitance um but i guess i hadn't until i read this i hadn't

00:12:39.420 picked up on it, but I do, it resonates with me now. And I'm like, yeah, that seems right.

00:12:44.480 That seems right. I think being on like the ex-lineal community, that's kind of one of 0.99

00:12:50.620 those things that I don't think about. But my partner who is heavily like even employed into

00:12:54.820 the industry of AI, the difference between him and I are so vast that it's not surprising the

00:13:02.400 way that he has integrated that into his systems, into his life, but also understands how he has

00:13:07.820 to be cautious and how it is one of those things that has to be operated with responsibility

00:13:12.600 that I think that there's that level of understanding but he is also very very excited

00:13:17.540 by the possibilities of what AI could do so there's this level like in our in my life specifically

00:13:25.520 now our responses to AI as me being a little more like dismissive and very much more like

00:13:31.840 negative about the whole thing as where he is trying to play it to his cards, if that makes

00:13:38.620 sense. That makes so much sense. And it's funny because you are basically living a microchasm of

00:13:44.180 what the data suggests. And that's kind of what it feels like when I'm thinking about it. I'm like,

00:13:48.000 honestly, I feel like I'm living as the stereotype that is this or like in this conversation.

00:13:54.220 Absolutely. So in this meta-analysis, they found that across almost all the data sets they looked

00:14:00.200 that women are about 20 to 25% less likely than men to be using generative AI. The meta-analysis

00:14:06.760 shows women have 22% lower odds of using AI than men. The gap appears across regions, industries,

00:14:13.200 education levels, and occupations. So you might hear that and think, okay, but maybe the people

00:14:18.800 who did these surveys got it wrong, looked at the wrong information. That gap, however, cannot be

00:14:25.460 explained by things like survey bias because they also, as I said, looked at who is downloading

00:14:30.460 tools like Claude and ChatGPT. And that data showed that women compromise about 42 percent

00:14:36.540 of ChatGPT website users globally, 27 percent of ChatGPT mobile app users, and even lower shares 0.67

00:14:43.580 of women are using the tool Claude from Anthropic. So this really suggests that the gender gap is

00:14:48.920 at a pretty massive global scale.

00:14:52.640 A couple of notable findings,

00:14:55.260 if women are more senior or have more experience,

00:14:57.960 it does narrow that gender gap a little bit, 0.75

00:15:00.420 but it does not completely eliminate that gap. 1.00

00:15:04.380 Senior women in technical roles 0.94

00:15:05.780 sometimes match or exceed men's usage,

00:15:08.720 but also junior women and women in non-technical roles

00:15:12.060 show much larger gaps.

00:15:14.200 So there are a couple of interesting,

00:15:16.580 notable outliers there,

00:15:18.000 But in general, just like what's happening in Samantha's household, men are even cautiously sort of gung-ho, experimenting with it, thinking pretty optimistically about what AI might be able to do.

00:15:31.480 Women are a little more skeptical, we'll say.

00:15:41.020 Behind every night spent making the kids lunches, there's a lot of suspense. 1.00

00:15:45.220 Will they finally eat the veggies?

00:15:46.660 Will the pesto survive the first bite?

00:15:49.020 Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

00:15:53.060 And will you finish Episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers?

00:15:56.980 Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month.

00:16:01.560 Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto-pay credit.

00:16:05.720 Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability.

00:16:08.400 Bell. Connection is everything.

00:16:10.780 Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?

00:16:13.460 Think again.

00:16:13.940 More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

00:16:19.080 And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.

00:16:23.280 So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

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00:16:38.620 That's 844-844-iHeart.

00:16:40.840 when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent

00:16:48.520 my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart

00:16:54.560 and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying

00:17:02.200 shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable

00:17:08.840 So I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. 0.66

00:17:14.300 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:17:21.680 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:17:25.660 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:17:29.100 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:17:32.240 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:17:41.180 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:17:47.120 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:17:59.600 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:18:06.700 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:18:10.140 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

00:18:16.240 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.

00:18:23.760 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

00:18:33.320 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:18:39.380 See you between the pages.

00:18:41.260 Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

00:18:42.860 And Sean Clements.

00:18:44.060 We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.

00:18:46.200 Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.

00:18:51.840 The show is famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on.

00:18:58.140 We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller.

00:19:00.640 The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anyway, too, right?

00:19:04.080 What do you think it is now?

00:19:05.180 It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology.

00:19:11.800 Danny McBride.

00:19:12.560 He loves Boba.

00:19:13.540 Oh, that's fantastic.

00:19:14.660 And you make it on, you make your own.

00:19:16.480 That's great.

00:19:17.240 I call him Taro Reed.

00:19:18.600 it's a good name they're all named after cast members of american pie yeah i call i don't

00:19:26.860 i never looked up if she was in this but i call him lychee sobieski yeah i don't think she was

00:19:31.900 an american pie but i haven't looked it up she was prominent around the same time yeah then

00:19:37.140 mary steenburgen why are you guys talking to me like i'm worried why are you talking so down to

00:19:42.720 me that you think i don't understand your little play play game i just really i get it trying to

00:19:49.380 set you up for success here listen to hollywood handbook on the iheart radio app apple podcasts

00:19:54.620 or wherever you get your podcasts i wonder just because we've been talking a lot um on the show

00:20:07.800 about like the quote male loneliness epidemic which women are also very lonely but that's what

00:20:14.460 we're talking about but I see a lot of stories of men like forming these bonds with AI and these

00:20:22.820 relationships with AI I and I have no idea but I wonder if that's also a part of it because women

00:20:28.560 usually have more of a support group than men yeah yeah I mean I I absolutely think that

00:20:36.180 Some of the way that AI is talked about by people who make it, some of the marketing language and decisions around it, I think reinforce some attitudes that I think are kind of sexist, right?

00:20:50.600 I remember very clearly it was like a grand opening, grand closing when Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was introducing this new vocal chatbot for OpenAI's chatbot named Sky.

00:21:05.820 And he basically said that he wanted the experience to be like the experience that people had in the movie Her, which if folks haven't seen that movie,

00:21:13.820 looking Phoenix is basically having a romantic and sexual relationship with an AI chatbot voiced

00:21:19.440 by Scarlett Johansson. And I love that movie. It's one of my favorite movies. But obviously,

00:21:24.800 within the framing of the movie, it is about a man using technology to satisfy his emotional

00:21:30.000 and sexual needs on top of his, you know, admin needs that you might be using AI for already.

00:21:37.380 And so when the head of OpenAI gets on a stage and promises people that they will be able to

00:21:41.900 use technology the same way it is used in this movie. Well, I can understand why that might hit

00:21:47.600 women in a kind of a weird way. Right. I can understand why it's like, well, what are you

00:21:51.900 really saying about this technology that that is your frame of reference for how you envision

00:21:56.500 people using it? Do you know what I mean? Yes. Yes, absolutely. And going back to one of the

00:22:03.380 other points you made at the beginning that comes up in these arguments of why women aren't using

00:22:09.000 AI as much. It did kind of remind me of the argument around STEM, like a lot of STEM

00:22:15.240 things where it's like, well, they just that's not how their brain works or that they don't

00:22:21.800 pursue those fields because of whatever X, Y, Z. So that feels very similar to me.

00:22:29.180 Oh, yes. I'm so glad that you brought that up, because when you look at how

00:22:32.540 the other conversations around gender gaps that we know exist in workplaces more broadly and

00:22:38.080 leadership roles more broadly, STEM roles more broadly. Often, just as you said, the pushback is

00:22:42.920 that women maybe are picking less lucrative work or fields. If you're Larry Summers, maybe it's the

00:22:48.860 idea that women are just innately less good at these fields or something. Now, never mind that

00:22:53.740 that really discounts the question of why fields that are associated with women are historically

00:22:59.500 devalued and underpaid. So even if, you know, there was a time where computing was seen as 0.69

00:23:05.200 women's administrative or secretarial work. When women were associated with it, it was lower paid 1.00

00:23:10.660 admin work. When men became associated with it, very clearly it became a different kind of work.

00:23:15.580 So that's clearly not the women's fault for, you know, for what roles they happen to be choosing.

00:23:20.560 But in any event, not only is that not what's really going on and not telling the full story

00:23:26.040 of what's happening in these workplaces, nor is it really what's going on or telling the full story

00:23:30.800 of AI adoption, that's not me saying this.

00:23:34.160 That's according to this meta-analysis.

00:23:36.360 As social scientist Katie Jin puts it in a piece called

00:23:39.780 There's a Reason Why Women Aren't Swooning Over AI Like Men Are,

00:23:43.360 which I love that title.

00:23:45.200 She writes, 1.00

00:23:46.280 The oft-proposed explanation is that women understand this new technology less 1.00

00:23:50.320 largely because they work in roles with lower exposure to it. 0.97

00:23:53.920 Women are, after all, still outnumbered in STEM degrees and careers,

00:23:57.680 including AI-specific roles. 0.96

00:23:59.360 The same is true in AI leadership.

00:24:01.880 Women hold fewer than 14% of senior executive positions in the industry.

00:24:06.200 But Harvard's study also found that the usage gap remains

00:24:09.460 even when women are explicitly given opportunities to learn and use AI roles.

00:24:14.180 So it's not just that women have less training or less access to AI.

00:24:19.020 Even when the people who did this meta-analysis equalized for that,

00:24:22.800 they still found that this AI gender gap persisted.

00:24:26.400 They looked at a study out of Kenya where women were explicitly offered training and access to AI, yet those women still used chat GPT 13 percent less than men.

00:24:37.360 So this seems to suggest these barriers aren't really about access or awareness about AI.

00:24:44.200 It's something else going on.

00:24:45.540 i feel like there's so many things i'm trying to work out when it comes to this conversation

00:24:52.680 about why is that seem like well obviously a equals b or a is because of b and one of the

00:24:59.180 things that i'm thinking about is like maybe just what i'm seeing when it comes to things like chat

00:25:03.780 gpt which feels like just an advanced version of google where we you know made that the thing

00:25:10.100 in researching but it gives the mediocre man who has a lot more confidence in women in general

00:25:16.540 even more confidence i guess in a way because they think they're getting that answer without

00:25:22.980 having to go to the people who actually found those answers in some weird ways like there's

00:25:28.160 so many thoughts like maybe what are some of these reasons that that we are finding that men

00:25:34.000 are more likely to use it not for me like that just seems like a rational process i think that's

00:25:39.280 true i think twice now i've gotten into a back and forth with somebody on reddit and i guess i don't

00:25:45.160 know their gender but i could tell that they were responding to me using chat gpt and i'm like oh

00:25:49.960 you didn't you couldn't it wasn't worth it you just wanted to keep the like argument going but

00:25:54.400 it wasn't worth it for you to come up with your own answer you take the chat gpt really right so

00:25:58.860 the meta analysis gave some answers as to what might be going on here what might explain some

00:26:05.260 of these gaps, I'll tell y'all what they said, and then I'll kind of give you my thoughts on it,

00:26:09.060 because I'm not, some of these I'm not so sure about. So the first is a lower familiarity and

00:26:13.760 knowledge with AI. So they said, women are more likely to report not knowing how generative AI

00:26:19.080 works or how to use it. I'm not totally sold on this. You know, it is in their meta-analysis,

00:26:25.760 so I wanted to include it, but this is just my take. AI is not difficult to understand.

00:26:31.160 It is not difficult to use, nor is it terribly complex.

00:26:34.940 There is nobody listening to the sound of my voice who could not figure it out, who

00:26:40.280 it is outside of the realm of their ability to comprehend.

00:26:43.180 It is not terribly complex.

00:26:44.860 I think that what this study is actually highlighting here is I think this tendency for the people

00:26:50.700 who make technology and talk about technology to do so in a way where it seems like the 0.99

00:26:56.600 technology they're talking about is so complex and your puny little lady brains could never 1.00

00:27:03.120 figure out what we're talking about here. Think about the way that people like Elon Musk, 0.99

00:27:07.880 Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman talk about technology. They talk about it in this way where it gives it

00:27:12.320 this gravitas that I think is oftentimes unearned because you don't need any kind of special

00:27:18.600 training to understand the basics of AI. And so I think the fact that tech leaders who, let's be

00:27:25.640 real often happen to be not just men, but a specific kind of man, not just white men,

00:27:30.400 but a specific kind of white guy.

00:27:32.340 I think the fact that they are consistently talking about this technology in a way that

00:27:37.460 makes it seem like your ordinary person could never understand it, I think it's sort of

00:27:40.800 at play here.

00:27:41.500 And I think that is with intention.

00:27:43.200 I think they do this because they want people to feel, I couldn't possibly understand what

00:27:47.760 they're talking about.

00:27:48.540 How could I hold these people accountable?

00:27:50.460 How could I expect things to be better for me?

00:27:52.080 How could I even, you know, know, you know, oftentimes they're telling people, oh, no, no, you want AI.

00:27:59.220 AI is good. People will say, no, I know what I like and I know what my experiences are.

00:28:04.840 And I know that I'm not enjoying, you know, opening my email, not even be able to use it because AI tools are being foisted on me non-consensually.

00:28:12.480 And they're like, no, no, no, it's actually great for you. Right.

00:28:14.920 That if people truly innately felt like they understood this technology, they would tech leaders wouldn't be able to do that anymore.

00:28:22.720 Right. It really does feel like they're just inflating the importance of it so that we'll believe it.

00:28:27.780 And then that when we are forced to use it because we have no way of pushing back and there's actually no regulation anymore on how it's being used,

00:28:36.000 that we'll just accept how great it is without actually knowing how great it is in the midst of the conversation of knowing how inaccurate it has been in the past.

00:28:44.760 Also, how hard is it when you literally do not have a choice if you use what used to be Google and what you thought would be something that would give you trusted sources?

00:28:53.800 And the top of it is literally AI results that you did not ask for.

00:28:58.320 So how hard is it to use when you're not given a choice to whether or not you have to use it?

00:29:03.780 Right. And this is what I'm saying.

00:29:05.240 It goes back to what I was when I started the conversation with of how we talk about it as this inevitable technology.

00:29:10.660 We all have to get on board.

00:29:12.040 Things that are good, you don't have to talk about them that way.

00:29:14.660 Things that people want, that's not how you have to frame them.

00:29:18.460 So Sam Wiles said on Threads, if AI is a good thing, why are we constantly told it's inevitable?

00:29:24.040 You don't have to do that with good things. 1.00

00:29:25.680 No one's ever like, ice coffee is inevitable, so you may as well get used to it, asshole. 0.99

00:29:30.000 This is so correct, right? 0.99

00:29:31.280 This is things that are good, you do not have to continue over and over and over again to

00:29:35.680 tell people that they better get on board with this good thing.

00:29:38.500 And like, no, that's not that's not how we talk about things that people like and are good.

00:29:43.280 Right. Also, it's not forced upon us by the government.

00:29:46.700 Like we are not the iced coffee being told we have to buy iced coffee when it gets to this temperature.

00:29:52.620 And no state can regulate whether or not you can use it, even though it can be harmful for you.

00:29:57.140 And we have seen harm done by this.

00:29:59.660 Yeah.

00:30:01.640 Exactly that.

00:30:02.560 We'll be right back.

00:30:32.560 Bell.ca for details and to check availability.

00:30:34.980 Bell. Connection is everything.

00:30:37.340 Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?

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00:30:41.040 More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.

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00:31:08.100 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:31:13.560 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:31:19.960 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:31:23.420 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.99

00:31:29.080 Shut up. Don't say anything. 0.99

00:31:31.840 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

00:31:36.280 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:31:40.840 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:31:48.280 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:31:52.080 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:31:55.760 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:31:58.820 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:32:07.780 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:32:13.700 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:32:26.180 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:32:33.300 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.

00:32:36.880 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

00:32:42.820 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.

00:32:50.300 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

00:32:59.900 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:33:05.820 See you between the pages.

00:33:07.840 Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

00:33:09.440 And Sean Clements.

00:33:10.640 We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.

00:33:12.820 Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.

00:33:18.420 The show is famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes

00:33:23.160 and understand what's going on.

00:33:24.740 We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller.

00:33:27.240 The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anyway, too, right?

00:33:30.680 What do you think it is now?

00:33:31.760 It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology.

00:33:38.400 Danny McBride.

00:33:39.160 He loves Boba.

00:33:40.120 Oh, that's fantastic.

00:33:41.240 And you make it on, you make your own.

00:33:43.060 That's great.

00:33:43.820 I call him Tarot Reed.

00:33:45.180 that's a good name they're all named after cast members of american pie yeah i call i don't i

00:33:53.580 never looked up if she was in this but i call him lychee sobieski yeah i don't think she was

00:33:58.500 an american pie but i still haven't looked it up haven't looked it up she was prominent around

00:34:02.340 the same time yeah then mary steenburgen why are you guys talking to me like i'm worried

00:34:06.980 why are you talking so down to me that you think i don't understand your little play play game i

00:34:14.100 I'm just really trying to set you up for success here.

00:34:17.860 Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:34:29.180 Another thing this meta-analysis found was lower confidence with it and sort of persistence or lower levels of persistence.

00:34:36.220 And so according to the meta-analysis, women report less confidence in prompting and are less likely to persist after poor AI outputs.

00:34:44.100 Men, however, are more likely to experiment repeatedly. So I think this is one of those things where essentially what is being said there is women have tried this technology and have identified that it can be janky and have reasonably concluded that maybe it's not worth the pain in the butt to keep trying with it. 0.96

00:35:02.740 And men are like, I'm going to keep on trying. 0.80

00:35:05.400 I think that it's like framing women taking, 0.98

00:35:11.280 like gleaning from their experiences of AI being full of lies,

00:35:14.840 hallucinations, actually being more work for them,

00:35:17.040 which has been my experience.

00:35:18.120 When I've tried to use AI a lot of times, I'm like, okay, well,

00:35:22.080 I could have done this in the time it took me to get,

00:35:24.840 to finally get AI to do it.

00:35:26.220 I could have done this myself and done a better job at it.

00:35:27.820 So I should have done that to begin with, wasted time. 1.00

00:35:29.820 Like, I don't like how this is framed as women being risk averse, when in reality, I think it's more like women making reasonable deductions about the time they want to spend on something that has proved itself to be ineffective.

00:35:43.360 And like, that's that's not risk averse. That's something else.

00:35:46.500 That's being tired of arguing with an inanimate object, which is what I've had to do when I'm yelling back at Google.

00:35:53.260 I don't use Siri, but any of those things because they did not understand what I was saying.

00:35:56.820 And I just stare at it. And like, why am I doing this with you?

00:35:59.820 you're and then being told also they remember when they're when you remember them listen i told

00:36:05.900 this story on my own podcast there are no girls on the internet after i did the episode with you

00:36:10.920 all about larry summers who was formerly on the board of open ai stepping down because of those

00:36:16.180 emails that were revealed between him and convicted child sex criminal jeffrey epstein

00:36:21.000 i was trying to get i was like oh maybe chat gpt can help me come up with like metadata and all of

00:36:26.080 that. So I put in what I have to ChatGPT and ChatGPT says, this is not correct. There is no

00:36:32.640 link between Larry Summers and Jeffrey Epstein. And I was like, oh, really? We don't have emails

00:36:39.340 linking the two? And they're like, and then ChatGPT is like, OK, well, yeah, maybe there's emails,

00:36:45.440 but you're suggesting that something illegal happened and we don't know anything about that.

00:36:50.100 And I was like, I said the emails were creepy. How would you define emails where a grown married man

00:36:55.560 is going to a convicted pedophile for advice 0.90

00:36:58.540 on how he can have sex with his mentee, 0.96

00:37:00.600 you wouldn't define those as creepy?

00:37:02.880 We got into a huge argument to the point where I asked it. 1.00

00:37:07.700 I was like, cut the crap. 0.99

00:37:09.860 Are you being so cagey because Larry Summers 1.00

00:37:13.720 used to be on the board of OpenAI that makes you ChachiPT?

00:37:17.400 ChachiPT says, let's be clear.

00:37:20.260 Larry Summers was never on the board of OpenAI.

00:37:23.000 Larry Summers has been on the board of OpenAI

00:37:24.500 since like 2023 so it's been kind of a while so we it's like not only was that infuriating

00:37:30.140 think of the work it took for me to like take stop my work day and have an argument a real

00:37:37.160 no argument with chat gpt this is the technology they're saying is the linchpin of our economy

00:37:42.980 right now i don't think so you literally spent emotions with a computer who is just trying to

00:37:48.300 protect their reputation which is weird because they're not a human this is what i'm saying like

00:37:53.260 Like, I'll tell you something.

00:37:55.480 I have not asked ChatGPT a single thing since then.

00:37:58.400 That was a little experiment to see if it was going to work.

00:38:00.860 It went so astronomically left.

00:38:03.020 And I'm like, OK, well, that's a waste of my time.

00:38:04.900 And it got my blood pressure up.

00:38:06.220 So it's like double bad.

00:38:08.020 I don't need this from you, too.

00:38:10.120 If I'm going to argue with someone, it's going to be a flesh and blood human in my life.

00:38:13.280 Not freaking ChatGPT.

00:38:15.500 Well, I think that's also a good point of like, we've talked about this before several times.

00:38:19.620 who makes this technology and the fear of like the biases and all that stuff in there and i know like

00:38:24.660 elon musk and gronkopedia has had a lot of things come up with what it is saying that are just flat

00:38:32.400 out ridiculous and like these flat out lies and so i do think that that is a concern and i i would

00:38:41.440 I would posit that that influences, like, I would guess that women are not getting the answers they want more often than men are not getting the answers that they do want.

00:38:54.520 Yes. And something to remember about AI, if there's one thing, even if you're thinking I'm not a techie, I'm not a computer person, this is not my forte. If there's one thing to remember is that AI, it's easy to think of it as robot computer brains that know everything, all knowing. It's not. It's trained and built by all of us humans.

00:39:15.040 And so the same kind of biases that we know humans have, AI is just trained on all of that to replicate it, right? And so keep that in mind when you're thinking about AI. And we have so much documentation about the ways that AI is biased. When it comes to reflecting women in workplaces, it's more likely to reflect women as younger than they actually are.

00:39:35.580 And so if the majority of, let's say, for instance, if the majority of women who are engineers are over 40, if that's just like a documented fact, AI will tell people, oh, they're actually younger than they are because it's reflecting a bias against more mature women.

00:39:52.940 You know, there have been studies that when women ask Chachi BT for negotiation advice, it regularly tells them to ask for less money. Right. So all of the biases that exist in society, AI is simply replicating those because it was trained on all of us. And so really keep that in mind.

00:40:09.920 Like, I can understand why women are not keen about going to this technology to help them understand the world around them and their workplace when we know it has these biases.

00:40:22.980 Right. I mean, that comes to the other point in that we already understand and know that the data research are based on men and there's not enough based on women or those marginalized communities at all.

00:40:34.780 Like, we just got to the point of realizing, hey, we need more. So more people have been doing it.

00:40:39.780 But all of that information is not there to provide a background for ChatGPT to pick up or whatever AI company.

00:40:46.920 And that's really concerning that we're acting like the information we know now is all we need to know when we know that's not true.

00:40:53.080 Exactly. That is such a good way to put it.

00:40:56.260 And another concern that women report about using AI, why they're kind of skeptical about it, is that women have stronger, what the meta-analysis called, kind of ethical concerns.

00:41:06.060 So women are more likely to view using AI, especially in professional settings or education

00:41:11.340 settings, as unethical or cheating. 0.69

00:41:13.800 So I don't disagree with this.

00:41:16.380 This totally makes sense to me anecdotally. 0.97

00:41:19.080 However, I think it's more complex than that because I don't think it's just that women

00:41:24.320 see AI as cheating. 0.90

00:41:26.220 It is that. 1.00

00:41:27.140 But I also think that in workplaces and in educational settings, women are more likely 0.85

00:41:30.940 to be scrutinized than our male counterparts. 0.98

00:41:33.100 Right.

00:41:33.200 And that's just the way that it is. 1.00

00:41:35.560 Like women aren't wrong for being like, oh, I feel like everybody is checking my work extra hard and harder than they're checking Joe's work or whatever.

00:41:42.440 The BBC spoke to psychologist Lee Chambers, who said women are more likely to be accused of not being competent.

00:41:48.600 So they have to emphasize their credentials more or demonstrate their subject matter expertise in a particular field.

00:41:53.420 There could be this feeling that if people know that you as a woman use AI, it is suggesting that you might not be as qualified as you actually are. 0.51

00:42:00.680 Women are already discredited and have their ideas taken by men and passed off as their own.

00:42:04.620 So having people knowing that you use AI might also play into this narrative that you're not qualified enough. It's just another thing debasing your skills, your competence and your value.

00:42:13.640 Now, that makes total sense to me. And I am in professional spaces of all kinds. And in some of these professional spaces, I've been around very accomplished men in tech who will not blink an eye at submitting like an op ed or something or a piece of writing that was clearly written by AI.

00:42:34.640 And it's just like, and I would never, like, the way I would be so embarrassed to have anybody be like, oh, did you submit this and it was AI generated? I can tell by whatever, whatever. I would crawl into a hole and die. I would be so embarrassed.

00:42:50.960 And the way that I can confirm that there are a lot of men in high up positions who do not feel that level of scrutiny.

00:43:00.280 And it just goes back to like marginalized people in these settings.

00:43:03.380 We're so used to carrying that extra eyes, you know, extra scrutiny of why we're here at all, our work, our value, our competence.

00:43:13.200 Why would you want to inject another reason to give somebody to continue to do that when you're already facing that in multiple levels?

00:43:20.960 I have to bring this back to fan fiction.

00:43:24.160 You know I do.

00:43:26.160 So there's a big concern in the fan fiction space of using AI.

00:43:34.440 And it's become such a thing.

00:43:37.380 And as discussed a lot, fan fiction is mostly written by women or non-binary people.

00:43:43.520 People will go out of their way to say in the tags, I use M dashes, but it's not AI.

00:43:48.520 they go way out of their way to be like I swear it's not AI and it's just it's so clear to me

00:43:55.920 that people don't want you to think like oh this is not worth like I didn't even put in the time

00:44:00.160 to do this whereas yeah I do think I don't think men would see it necessarily in that way they

00:44:09.080 would see it as like oh yeah it just saved me some time but meanwhile now I know that AI uses

00:44:13.540 a lot of em dashes because yeah yeah that doesn't surprise me at all because i think the fan fiction

00:44:22.360 community is definitely a community that values human creativity like you wouldn't be in the

00:44:27.880 fan fiction community if you didn't value human creativity and it's not it doesn't surprise me

00:44:31.460 that that's a community that it's also full of women yes yes and then people always put this

00:44:38.040 thing too at the top where they're like please don't feed my work to ai and i'm like that's just

00:44:41.820 not going to help you, but I appreciate the effort. Well, that's the other part to that is when you

00:44:47.880 start thinking about using ChatGPT or any of the situations, you don't know who you're taking from.

00:44:52.940 And there is this level of guilt for me on the end of like not being the creative, but if I'm

00:44:58.180 researching things and I'm just basing it on one small bit of information that's, you know, from

00:45:03.720 ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever, whatnot, which is constant and I can't stand it. It feels unethical

00:45:09.320 in that manner of like, we already know

00:45:11.680 that artists are really, really on edge

00:45:15.120 because their work is being constantly stolen.

00:45:18.100 Creators who are writers, who are part of this,

00:45:20.640 researchers who are doing lots of work

00:45:22.440 to get their educations and to be in this field,

00:45:25.020 like using that information.

00:45:26.240 And like, oftentimes it's not cited.

00:45:28.920 It just becomes one big blob of information.

00:45:30.940 It feels so gross to see that play out.

00:45:35.300 I've had such a good point.

00:45:36.240 There was this like micro controversy online a couple of weeks ago about this literary festival, the Black Romance Literary Festival, where the question was, do the people who run this festival, the organizers, will they accept people who use AI in their work at this organization?

00:45:52.800 Will those people be allowed to be included in panels?

00:45:54.420 And so it sounded like they were really talking about illustrations, like cover art.

00:45:58.320 And so the organization gave what to a lot of people in the community felt like not a great answer.

00:46:05.060 The organizer said, we don't use AI in our work, but we're not turning away people who do use AI.

00:46:11.820 We want to provide resources and education to those folks, but we don't want to disclude them.

00:46:17.220 One of my listeners made a very good point that it seemed like that was a kind of attempt at a harm reduction kind of position.

00:46:24.860 But maybe they didn't say it like that and perhaps they should have clarified that.

00:46:27.960 But, you know, I think at a time when artists, particularly marginalized artists, are really having a hard time, anybody who tries to make money from making a thing is having a hard time of it right now.

00:46:42.820 And I think when, as you said, Sam, we know when you ask AI to generate an image, it's not generating a new piece.

00:46:53.060 It's just taking from what's out there, right?

00:46:55.320 I remember there was a time where people were using an AI tool to make those futuristic selfies.

00:47:02.040 Half of them had watermarks or logos in them somewhere.

00:47:06.440 That's how much they were just taking from other artists' copyrighted work.

00:47:09.940 So I don't think that the creatives who are saying, hey, we need this to be clarified.

00:47:15.440 Hey, we need to put a line in the sand of what we're going to do when it comes to taking other artists' work in this way.

00:47:21.960 I don't think they're wrong for being anxious about that and expecting and deserving some answers around it, frankly.

00:47:51.960 From $94 a month, price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto-pay credit.

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00:48:02.300 Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?

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00:48:32.640 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:48:38.580 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,

00:48:44.740 pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the

00:48:49.320 same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,

00:48:54.740 the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:48:58.000 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors

00:49:02.800 and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

00:49:08.080 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters,

00:49:13.380 and that is a Trojan horse.

00:49:15.560 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives,

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00:49:24.780 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app,

00:49:27.720 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:49:30.860 See you between the pages.

00:49:32.820 When I was 14 years old,

00:49:35.080 I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:49:38.580 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring

00:49:41.280 how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:49:45.120 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:49:48.740 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.96

00:49:54.180 shut up, don't say anything.

00:49:56.940 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.98

00:50:01.360 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:50:05.800 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed,

00:50:10.480 and I just started screaming.

00:50:13.440 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:50:17.340 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:50:20.800 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:50:24.420 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart

00:50:27.180 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:50:30.340 or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:50:32.840 Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

00:50:34.440 And Sean Clemens.

00:50:35.640 We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.

00:50:37.540 Every episode, we're trying to help our guests

00:50:39.420 improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers the show is

00:50:43.960 famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's

00:50:49.240 going on we recommend some of our recent episodes with ben stiller the definition of what is a movie

00:50:53.760 has kind of changed anyway too right what do you think it is now it's images and words being spoken

00:50:59.740 captured by some sort of uh technology danny mcbride he loves oh that's fantastic and you

00:51:06.440 make it on you make your own that's great i call him tarot reed

00:51:10.260 it's a good name they're all named after cast members of american pie yeah i call i don't

00:51:18.440 i never looked up if she was in this but i call him lychee sobieski yeah i don't think she was

00:51:23.500 an american pie but i haven't looked it up she was prominent around the same time yeah then

00:51:28.740 mary steenburgen why are you guys talking to me like i'm worried why are you talking so down to

00:51:34.320 me that you think I don't understand your little play play game. I just really I get it trying to

00:51:40.960 set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:51:46.280 or wherever you get your podcasts. So when it comes to kind of the reasons why women might not 0.99

00:51:58.740 be adopting AI like their male counterparts, I did find this meta-analysis pretty useful

00:52:03.980 at like giving us the scope of the issue, giving us the scope of the gender gap and

00:52:08.500 some reasons as to why that might be.

00:52:10.960 However, I just don't think that some of the answers really spoke to the nuance that I

00:52:15.220 see in that experience as a woman that's a little bit skeptical of AI.

00:52:18.440 So I found this piece in the Stanford Social Innovation Review by Mara Bolas, who is the

00:52:22.920 founder of First Prompt and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School called The AI Gender

00:52:27.320 Gap Paradox.

00:52:28.840 And I think that this piece does a really good job

00:52:32.040 of getting at some of the nuance 1.00

00:52:33.160 that's not just women aren't smart enough 0.97

00:52:35.680 to get AI or whatever, right?

00:52:37.260 And so one bit that she pointed out 1.00

00:52:39.340 is that women are already doing a lot of work. 0.98

00:52:42.940 She writes, more than half of professionals

00:52:44.980 say that learning AI feels like a second job, 0.94

00:52:47.560 which for most women is actually a third job 0.99

00:52:50.080 when you consider the continued disparities 1.00

00:52:52.380 in time spent on childcare and housework.

00:52:55.860 And so that I thought was...

00:52:58.140 Such a good point, right? That doing your current job or your current educational workload or

00:53:02.980 whatever is already a lot of work. If you're a woman, you're probably taking on more of the 1.00

00:53:08.940 labor at home, more of the emotional labor, more of the care work, all of that. And on top of it,

00:53:14.060 now people are telling you that if you don't take the time to learn how to integrate AI into that

00:53:18.200 work, you don't really care about your career and you're holding yourself back. I just, yeah,

00:53:22.920 it's like that, like that has to be part of the conversation if we're going to actually address

00:53:26.440 the gender gap in AI usage.

00:53:28.480 Yes.

00:53:29.860 Yeah.

00:53:30.580 And this piece, I think,

00:53:31.940 also just does a great job

00:53:33.080 of reframing fear or knowledge gaps

00:53:37.500 into what I suspect they actually are,

00:53:39.580 which is the ability

00:53:40.620 to competently analyze risk. 1.00

00:53:43.480 Women aren't looking at AI and saying, 0.92

00:53:45.180 I'm afraid of it,

00:53:46.100 or like, I can never learn it.

00:53:47.260 I think what they're actually saying is,

00:53:49.160 I have analyzed the risk

00:53:51.600 that using it might bring into my work,

00:53:53.980 and I've made a decision based on that,

00:53:56.480 that I'm not going to be using it like that.

00:53:59.640 That piece in the Stanford Innovation Review

00:54:01.920 looked at studies from Deloitte and Pew. 0.95

00:54:04.840 Both of them showed that women predict AI

00:54:07.160 will bring less benefit and do more harm 0.67

00:54:10.580 across personal, professional, and public life.

00:54:13.460 Men, however, tend to be more optimistic, confident,

00:54:16.260 and self-assured in their competence.

00:54:19.000 Doesn't that really say it all?

00:54:21.380 Well, there's so much.

00:54:22.320 Like, when I'm thinking about the amount

00:54:23.680 that we research and the amount that we try to make sure that we are noting who is referencing

00:54:30.160 and giving credit to whomever. So we're not doing any violations, copyright law, any of those

00:54:37.100 things. And again, we know that chat GPT nor any of the AI really care. They don't care where the

00:54:43.420 sources are coming from. And so as people who know that it is not 100 percent proof and we are trying

00:54:51.380 to be doing our due diligence and give correct information, yeah, that is more work to go

00:54:57.880 back to whatever we thought we could use with AI to actually verify where this information

00:55:04.640 is coming from.

00:55:05.300 Like, it's kind of funny when we talk about having research help and having someone else

00:55:09.480 do the research, it feels like more work because I'm like, I don't know if this is true.

00:55:13.520 I got to go read the whole article and get, you know, like doing more work.

00:55:16.640 And it feels the same way in this type of conversation with AI, because I don't completely

00:55:22.200 trust, once again, and like analyzing the risk that this is actually true.

00:55:27.460 This might sound way off base, but when I was reading some of the research about why 0.73

00:55:32.140 women don't use AI as much, I couldn't help thinking about what a lot of heterosexual

00:55:38.000 women who are married to men or in relationships with men report, where if you ask a man in

00:55:43.460 your life to do something, what you're actually creating is like work for you later when you have

00:55:48.840 to answer the follow up or correct what he's done wrong. I hate that for us. Women who find

00:55:56.120 themselves in close relation with men, I hate that for us. But like, that is what we got that 1.00

00:56:04.520 we're served to that all the time. We would be lying. I think every woman listening has had that

00:56:08.600 experience, and it's so frustrating. But I think that's, it really mirrors to me what women are

00:56:15.140 talking about when they talk about how AI is used in their work. When you have to go and correct the 0.97

00:56:19.780 mistake, ask again, give the follow-up, whatever it's going to be, that's just adding more and more

00:56:25.160 to your emotional load. Wouldn't it have just been easier for you to do it yourself in the first

00:56:28.620 place? Right. Also, that does feel like if we get something wrong as women and marginalized people,

00:56:33.820 we're going to be penalized a lot more than when men do.

00:56:37.500 Men are given excuses and are like, eh, you're fine.

00:56:40.660 It's a one-time thing.

00:56:41.700 Or they feel like they can brush it off.

00:56:43.180 Whether it's just maybe they feel like they can do it that way,

00:56:45.820 as where women have the anxiety of like, no,

00:56:47.520 we're going to get the worst punishment ever slash marginalized people.

00:56:50.420 So maybe that's also that level of confidence that we don't have,

00:56:54.060 which is delusional.

00:56:56.340 Yes.

00:56:56.960 And I think this speaks to something else that I saw in the Stanford piece

00:57:01.320 that I just thought was so interesting,

00:57:02.380 which is that women self-report not feeling confident with how AI works, we might be offered

00:57:08.320 AI skills training, but what we're not really offered is a chance at like actual knowledge

00:57:13.860 into this technology, all the issues that go into it, like an actual fundamental understanding and

00:57:18.720 crash course on how it works. The piece cites a Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey that

00:57:22.620 shows that when women say they want generative AI training, they are not just looking for skills,

00:57:27.200 they're signaling awareness of this technology's opacity and their unwillingness to trust a system

00:57:31.780 that they don't fully understand.

00:57:33.680 A systemic review of gender and AI adoption

00:57:35.540 found that women consistently cite

00:57:37.140 things like lack of transparency

00:57:38.680 and the opaque nature of AI tools

00:57:41.100 as barriers to trust.

00:57:42.680 And so it's exactly what you just laid out, Sam.

00:57:45.520 And again, that's not the same thing

00:57:48.160 as not feeling smart enough

00:57:50.380 or competent enough to understand something.

00:57:52.660 It's reasonable to say

00:57:53.940 that people that make AI tools

00:57:55.540 have intentionally designed them

00:57:57.280 and they intentionally talk about them

00:57:58.800 with such a lack of transparency

00:58:00.480 that I don't trust it.

00:58:02.520 That is a really reasonable position.

00:58:05.720 That's not unreasonable.

00:58:06.960 I don't like the framing

00:58:07.880 that this like totally reasonable way to be

00:58:10.980 is, you know, bad in some way 0.76

00:58:14.540 or that women are shooting themselves 0.99

00:58:15.700 in the foot economically 1.00

00:58:16.780 by showing this like reasonable lack of trust.

00:58:21.000 Right. And, you know, another thing to that is,

00:58:23.240 again, I keep coming back

00:58:24.220 to how we've seen the mistakes

00:58:25.840 and maybe that's what it is.

00:58:26.980 This has been so rushed, 0.78

00:58:28.320 But the constant times that like we see things that are not good are usually really bad for women.

00:58:33.500 Like I keep thinking about the AI videos of the deep fakes that happened with that Twitch streamer that we talked about.

00:58:39.440 Was it two years ago? I don't even remember.

00:58:41.380 We had like because we were really talking about the fact things like this as super concerning because it does go after women for like just being there.

00:58:50.380 Yeah. I mean, that speaks to what I was talking about earlier when we were talking about the way that Sam Altman, the way that Sam Altman was presenting, talking about the chatbot they were creating Sky, that there are so many examples of the vibes just being sus for women in these spaces, right?

00:59:10.620 you know, I make a podcast about the intersection of gender and technology. And oftentimes when we

00:59:18.000 talk about AI, we're talking about things like non-consensual sexualized deepfakes. We're talking

00:59:23.640 about things like Sam Altman, you know, saying people should be able to have the kind of

00:59:28.400 relationship that Joaquin Phoenix has with the chatbot in the movie Her. We're talking about

00:59:33.900 things like Elon Musk creating a anime teenager kind of sex fantasy chatbot. We're talking about

00:59:43.020 men who build technology, who fill their teams with other men. They lack gender diversity and 0.99

00:59:51.160 racial diversity or any kind of real inclusion. And then they talk about women in these like 0.97

00:59:56.360 misogynistic ways. It's not surprising to me that women are being slower to adopt this technology

01:00:01.820 that is made in such a misogynistic soup.

01:00:05.220 And as Mara Bolas put it in that Stanford Review piece,

01:00:09.700 as in financial systems, 1.00

01:00:11.300 women are attuned to the weaknesses 1.00

01:00:12.720 in generative AI systems 1.00

01:00:14.100 that designers didn't notice or prioritize,

01:00:16.900 things like bias, privacy risks, unreliable outputs,

01:00:19.760 before putting their products out into the world,

01:00:22.340 which speaks to that rushed quality

01:00:24.100 that you were just talking earlier.

01:00:25.900 Some of the industry's more misogynistic offerings

01:00:28.420 see Grok's Ani fantasy chatbot

01:00:30.740 or disturbing policies, see Facebook's leaked policies on children and illicit content,

01:00:35.580 are enough to send most users into a kinatonic depressive spiral. 0.98

01:00:39.220 But for women, beyond being offensive, such outputs are evidence of what gets built when 1.00

01:00:44.720 developmental teams lack gender diversity. 1.00

01:00:47.280 When women engage with systems that they've been largely left out of creating, 0.90

01:00:50.840 the products can feel foreign, awkward, or even hostile. 0.97

01:00:54.640 And so I think that is absolutely what's going on here.

01:00:57.860 The vibes around how this technology is made, who makes it, who is in the room, who has the power over it,

01:01:03.820 and how that power is being used and wielded to shape the world, all of that sucks for marginalized people.

01:01:09.840 So, yeah, surprise, surprise, those same marginalized people are saying, no, thank you. 0.98

01:01:14.000 Y'all can keep it. 0.99

01:01:15.320 Yep. And it's not like we don't have historical, societal, systemic evidence of this going wrong for us.

01:01:22.740 I love how men are, like, confident, optimistic.

01:01:26.200 Oh, it's going to be great.

01:01:27.420 I'm like, because it historically has for you.

01:01:31.400 Guess what?

01:01:32.300 Not so much over here.

01:01:34.900 Not so much at all.

01:01:36.760 And I wanted to end on this.

01:01:39.420 When I was researching this, I found this post on Reddit that I thought really did a great job of summarizing my thoughts.

01:01:44.140 So there was a post in the Ask Feminist subreddit.

01:01:46.800 And the post asks, why are women using generative AI less than men?

01:01:51.260 And the redditor Trooper SJP answers, I'm a university professor.

01:01:55.480 If female students are using ChatGPT less than male students, it is the male students we should be worried about.

01:02:01.620 There have been studies showing that there is a negative cognitive impact of using generative AI on learners. 0.51

01:02:06.100 This includes loss and ability to retain information, loss of critical thinking skills, loss of empathy, degradation of writing and math skills, degradation of problem-solving skills, and on and on.

01:02:17.340 Furthermore, generative AI is bad for the environment, contributes to environmental racism, is built on stolen data by corporations who will zealously guard their own intellectual property while willingly violating yours.

01:02:27.560 And capitalist excitement in replacing entry-level workers with AI is having an immediate negative impact on young job seekers aged 22 to 27, but will have a much more profound impact on all of us when we lose a generation of entry-level workers who won't get the experience needed to become experienced workers

01:02:45.040 when the experienced workers retire.

01:02:47.980 ChatGPT is also inaccurate, bland,

01:02:50.060 and produces terrible work full of false information.

01:02:53.520 Furthermore, in classrooms, including mine,

01:02:55.780 the use of generative AI is considered

01:02:57.380 an academic integrity violation

01:02:59.100 and will result in a zero for that assignment

01:03:01.260 and forwarding the case to the student conduct board.

01:03:04.100 My students would not appreciate it

01:03:05.520 if I used ChatGPT to create lesson plans,

01:03:07.960 to grade their work,

01:03:08.860 and to write their letters of recommendation.

01:03:10.700 I do not appreciate my students passing off work

01:03:12.980 they didn't write

01:03:13.620 that has a direct negative impact on themselves and the world as their own. 0.93

01:03:17.200 So I don't think it is bad that women are less likely to be cheating

01:03:20.040 by using ChatGPT in their work than men.

01:03:22.220 I think it is bad that so many men are wasting their educations by cheating.

01:03:26.960 And I felt like that really summed up what I was trying to say about this reframing.

01:03:32.720 I don't like that this conversation is simply framed as women aren't using AI

01:03:37.340 and thus sort of almost blaming women for all of these systemic reasons

01:03:43.240 and reasonable reasons as to why that might be. 0.99

01:03:45.780 And also sort of saying, well, if women weren't so afraid and also stupid about AI, 0.99

01:03:51.000 maybe they'd be making more women. 1.00

01:03:52.440 It's not society, it's the stupid women. 1.00

01:03:54.240 I really think that we need to reframe that and say, well, what are women telling us 1.00

01:03:58.260 by not using this technology? 1.00

01:03:59.980 Like, should we really just be saying these women are making a bad choice? 1.00

01:04:03.460 Shouldn't we really be zeroing in on what women are saying as it pertains to why we

01:04:07.700 are not so gung-ho to be adopting this technology the way that men are?

01:04:12.240 that's that's sort of my that's sort of my my so what in all this you know i think in the future

01:04:17.560 we're going to come back and have a conversation about the the red the lining of this type of

01:04:23.760 usage and this conversation and the growing population of the red pill community oh yes 0.99

01:04:29.140 and because we're talking more and more like it has become even more so where they have come to 0.58

01:04:32.880 the point of saying of incels saying being straight and having a relationship with a woman 0.75

01:04:37.680 is gay like literally that's their like whole insult have you seen this so the gayest thing 1.00

01:04:43.520 a man can do is is sleep with a woman having sex with a woman right submitting and pleasing a woman 0.99

01:04:48.420 essentially was kind of like that kind of intake but i really do wonder if this conversation of

01:04:54.200 using chat gpt to replace that interaction again with a maloliness epidemic and how it becomes

01:04:59.060 violent if this conversation and if this push and things like what uh sam altman was trying to do

01:05:05.180 when he first created that chatbot,

01:05:06.880 as well as what Elon Musk is trying to do

01:05:10.040 creating his chatbot,

01:05:11.380 is just opening up a bigger community

01:05:14.620 and bigger doorway for more incel activity

01:05:17.940 and red pill activity.

01:05:18.860 And we're going to have to come back

01:05:20.220 and have to deal with the consequence

01:05:21.640 of things like AI being a part of this narrative.

01:05:26.220 Absolutely. I completely agree.

01:05:29.400 I think those things are totally linked.

01:05:31.620 And I'm in the middle of doing a lot of research

01:05:33.160 about the kinds of sexual and romantic attachments

01:05:36.340 that people create with AI.

01:05:37.900 And I think it's complicated

01:05:40.640 because I want people to feel like

01:05:42.400 they have nourishing relationships in their lives,

01:05:44.640 but healthy, nourishing relationships come with friction.

01:05:48.720 Like that's what you get

01:05:49.580 from being in relationship with other humans.

01:05:51.800 And I think that the availability of folks

01:05:54.700 to kind of engage in frictionless relationships

01:05:58.780 where they can just take and take and take it,

01:06:01.620 extract and extract and extract,

01:06:02.700 and always get what they want out of them.

01:06:04.600 In some ways, I can see why that is therapeutic,

01:06:06.800 but that is not what builds healthy people.

01:06:09.940 Like healthy people have to experience relationships with friction.

01:06:13.980 And that's just the bottom line.

01:06:16.460 Yes.

01:06:17.740 Yes.

01:06:18.760 Well, topic for a future day.

01:06:20.780 Yes, I love it.

01:06:23.180 I also have to say, a dude told me the other day,

01:06:26.660 he was like, well, I love AI because it gives me more leisure time.

01:06:31.420 And I was like, well, wait till you don't have a job and then you're not going to have a way at that leisure time.

01:06:37.980 It'll be all leisure all the time.

01:06:40.440 You won't be able to do all those things you enjoy.

01:06:42.520 Except you'll be stressed out because you have no monies.

01:06:46.360 More leisure time.

01:06:48.460 All right.

01:06:49.600 Well, thank you so much, Bridget, for coming during the stressful time.

01:06:54.040 We always love talking to you.

01:06:56.320 Can't wait to see you in the new year, 2026.

01:06:59.000 Yes, we're almost there.

01:07:00.780 Almost there.

01:07:01.940 In the meantime, where can the good listeners find you? 0.84

01:07:04.600 You can find me at my podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet,

01:07:07.180 where we explore all kinds of issues of the intersection of gender and identity and technology and social media. 0.89

01:07:12.620 You can check me out on Instagram at BridgetMarie in D.C. or on YouTube, but there are no girls on the Internet. 0.94

01:07:18.240 Yes.

01:07:18.800 And go do that if you have not already, listeners.

01:07:22.400 If you would like to contact us, you can.

01:07:24.140 You can email us at hello at stuffwhenevertoldyou.com.

01:07:26.380 You can find us on Blue Sky at Mom Stuff Podcast or on Instagram and TikTok at stuffwhenevertoldyou.

01:07:29.980 we're also on youtube we have some new merchandise at comp bureau and we have a book you can get

01:07:33.580 wherever you get your books thanks as always to our super producer christine our executive

01:07:36.920 and our contributor joey thank you and thanks to you for listening so if i never told you

01:07:40.940 this production by heart radio for more podcasts my heart radio you can check out the heart radio

01:07:44.040 app apple podcast wherever you listen to your favorite show

01:07:46.140 if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality

01:08:00.180 welcome home pro society is a weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat for anyone

01:08:06.420 who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse each week

01:08:10.940 we're connecting the dots between books the internet and pop culture with your favorite

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01:08:21.680 on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i survived nine months in

01:08:28.980 captivity and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed

01:08:34.340 them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files every week i'm with survivors

01:08:40.640 who lived through the unthinkable,

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01:08:46.440 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

01:08:50.280 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart

01:08:53.040 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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01:08:59.960 Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

01:09:01.900 And Sean Clemens.

01:09:03.100 We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.

01:09:05.160 Every episode, we're trying to help our guests

01:09:06.880 improve their careers by mainly focusing

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01:09:15.760 and understand what's going on.

01:09:17.320 We recommend some of our recent episodes

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01:09:22.260 Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app,

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01:09:28.340 I'm Nick Turturro.

01:09:29.360 You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard,

01:09:32.600 or Spike Lee's Black Klansman.

01:09:34.140 And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro,

01:09:36.940 I deliver pizza to a new guest.

01:09:39.400 I've shared a slice with everyone,

01:09:40.920 from Seth Rollins...

01:09:42.040 What are you doing with my belt?

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01:09:44.180 I don't think I've ever met somebody

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01:09:49.260 And now, we even have more great guests coming up,

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01:09:53.940 It's called happiness.

01:09:55.020 Delivering happiness.

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01:09:57.520 Open your free iHeartRadio app,

01:09:59.540 search Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro,

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - December 30, 2025

Women Use AI Less Than Men at Work. Is That a Bad Thing？

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