LABOUR UNDER ILLUSION OP-ED: The feminine rage against the machine: Why we need women’s scepticism about AI

Women use AI less than men and it is scepticism born out of risk aversion and realisation that reckless AI adoption is going to cost them jobs.

We had to read it twice and then send it on to make sure we weren’t the only one’s reeling. A major law firm comments on research showing women use AI less than men and warns this could affect workplace outcomes. Their proposed solution? Explain that AI is a useful tool and create psychological safety. And if not, you run the risk of your business’s employment equity goals not being achievable, and your female employees risk becoming even more unemployable.

Really? If that’s where we’ve landed, we’ve completely missed the point. Our jaws are still on the ground.

As if forced AI adoption in and of itself isn’t contentious (we can write about that next), the very notion that AI literally controls your career is ludicrous. AI ethics then becomes a moot point, even before considering AI facilitating discrimination (be it age, race or gender based).

The feminine rage against the machine is not a problem to be solved so much as a signal to take notice of – like a sneeze or cough foreshadowing a pandemic. Scepticism in a world led by crazies is rational and valuable.

Scepticism, according to the law firm (and indeed much of mainstream media and overly optimistic politicians) is portrayed as career-limiting ignorance, or stubbornness. As a reason not to hire. As a thing to be overcome by organisations to meet equity targets. Yet scepticism is precisely what the world will lack if everyone were forced into adoption for adoption sake. Scepticism, we argue, is the skill we need more of in future.

Indeed, research shows that women’s scepticism is rooted in the real insights that women are both more risk averse than men (an important balance to reckless, irrational exuberance amid a hype cycle) and in the reality that AI really does pose a greater risk to women’s careers, jobs and tasks (between the types of jobs women are hired into and the invisible labour female employees are expected to take on). Women know that reckless AI adoption is going to cost them jobs – and cost our economy in the long run as the risk roosters come home to rest.

And then there is the other inconvenient truth that reminds us of the social and economic cost of workplace sexism women have to constantly guard against: when women do adopt AI, as good girls doing what they are told to do, they are seen as incompetent by colleagues and supervisors! (Male colleagues however face no such penalty for AI adoption, they are seen as “pragmatic” instead of incapable…)

These are the realities women face, and why scepticism in this case is a sign of the kind of humans you want – need – in your organisation. People who talk disruption without clear strategy and understanding of long-run consequences will cost us all.

We call on leaders and organisations to consider the following before pressuring women to adopt technologies without question:

Your business relies on having customers. And that relies on your customers being employed. Purchase power is required for any of the new technologies being advocated to actually be bought.