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ChatGPT advises women to ask for lower salaries, study finds
(thenextweb.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2025
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Now I really wanna know if that's actually the best advice or sexism. Because I could see that our society might be so bad that this is genuinely good advice.
It’s neither. LLMs are statistical models: if the training material contains bias (women get lower salaries) the output will reflect that bias.
That's not the question.
It wasn't about whether the LLM was well reasoned, it was about whether the conclusion was (pragmatically speaking) correct.
LLMs do not give the correct answer, just the most probable sequence of words based on the training.
That kind of studies (because there are hundreds) highlight two things:
1- LLMs could be incorrect, biased, or give fake information (the so called hallucinations). 2- the previous point stems from the training material proving the existence of bias in the society.
In other words, having an LLM recommending lower salaries for women is a proof that there is a gender gap.
Again, that wasn't the original question.
The question was about whether women are genuinely more likely to be passed over for a job offer if they ask for as much pay as a man would ask for, or if (as you described), or both. A broken clock is right twice a day, and it's missing the point of the question if you go and explain why you can't rely on said broken clock.
Are hiring managers actually less likely to hire women if they ask for market-rate pay, as opposed to men when they do the same?
If instead of giving passive aggressive replies you would spend a moment to reflect on what I wrote you would understand that ChatGPT reflect the reality, including any bias. In short the answer is yes with high probability.
I can't believe we should ever say this. No, the chat machine is the problem.
The chat machine is just a tool. The problem is that a pay disparity exists in society, and that they did not account for this bias in the training data.
That disparity gets very narrow when you account for men and women with similar roles, education, time in career and industry.
Much of that pay disparity is from the jobs we pick. There are also social pressure where a man's value is determined by how much he makes. Guys are more willing to do dangerous or demanding jobs that pay more.
The AI is still just reflecting the bias
Yes, they shouldn't go for those garbage non-paying worthless jobs like nursing and teacher, instead work in finance and take big bets arbitraging out millions from whole economies.
Point is that a male nurse of equivalent education and experience is still paid similarly.
Aggressive jobs that involve competitive industries and high stress like wallstreet which demand a very shit work life balance are not favored by a lot of women I believe. Work/Life balance is something a lot of women have pressure to maintain over men. Like I said though men have more pressure to earn a higher wage. Testosterone is something that just makes men want to compete including earning a higher wage.
Well...you might want to inform yourself about what a nursing job requires (here's some of the information you might find: high stress yes, working in shifts that are compromising work/life balance yes, work that requires a lot of lifting heavy things- yes...people who believe your sentiments are the problem - yes)
I'm super familiar with nursing. They are paid extremely well and have great benefits. And I would argue they are still not paid enough.
A better example is PSW workers. They are paid not enough and don't have great benefits and have incredibly hard jobs.
But we're talking about population level stuff here. You need to aggregate the jobs women work not just cherry pick a few. Many of the jobs are not nursing. Likewise there are many jobs men do that are demanding and don't pay well.
The problem is to use LLMs for the wrong things expecting correct answers.
Absolutely, so who is building a study that uses it for the wrong thing and then publishing articles about it
The study wanted to highlight the bias, not to recommend ChatGTP’s advice
the society is also the problem