Women may be facing new workplace challenges with new research showing they risk being left behind in the transition to artificial intelligence (AI).
An OECD Policy Brief, released today, said male and female workers had roughly the same occupational exposure to AI overall.
However, women were overrepresented in clerical occupations that could be heavily impacted by the transition and underrepresented in vocations that would benefit from the changes.
Women were also less positive than men about the potential opportunities from AI.
“Women are still underrepresented in the AI workforce (the narrow set of workers with the skills to develop and maintain AI systems), among AI users (a broader category capturing workers who say that they interact with AI at work in one way or another) and among ICT graduates,” the policy brief said.
“In a recent study, female workers were 20 percentage points less likely to say they had used ChatGPT than male workers in the same occupation.”
Occupational exposure to AI refers to the degree of overlap between the abilities required in an occupation and the technical abilities of AI.
“It is well established that due to AI’s progress in automating non-routine, cognitive tasks, the occupations most exposed to AI tend to be ‘white collar occupations’ typically requiring several years of formal training and/or tertiary education,” the brief said.
“Occupations with the highest exposure to AI will be most impacted by AI, most exposed to the associated risks and opportunities, and could face the most disruption.”
The full brief is on the OECD website.
