It’s a simple choice, the kind designed to reveal something fundamental about how you think. Take a guaranteed thousand dollars, or flip a coin for a chance at two thousand? Women and men don’t weigh these odds the same way. That difference might explain why they see artificial intelligence so differently too.
Beatrice Magistro and Sophie Borwein wanted to understand a stubborn pattern that keeps showing up in surveys about AI. They surveyed roughly 3,000 people across Canada and the United States in late 2023. They asked what people thought about AI and how they approached uncertainty more generally.
The findings were stark. They matched earlier research on how people feel about automation. When asked whether AI’s risks outweigh its benefits on a scale from 1 to 10, women averaged 4.87 while men came in at 4.38. That’s about 11% higher. It’s roughly the same gap as for trade policy, another area where gender differences matter politically. Women see AI as riskier than men do.
Two factors drive this gap: how people handle risk and what jobs they hold.
Factor 1: The Certainty Effect
The lottery question revealed a clear pattern. Women chose the certain outcome more often when offered a choice between guaranteed money and a gamble with a higher potential payoff. This wasn’t about AI knowledge or job prospects. It was about comfort with uncertainty.
The researchers ran an experiment to test whether risk drives these attitudes. They changed the odds that a company’s AI adoption would create more jobs than it destroyed.
- At 100% benefit: Women supported adoption almost as strongly as men did.
- At 30% benefit: Women’s support fell to 2.63 on a five-point scale. Men averaged 2.98.
The certainty of benefits matters more to women. When outcomes become uncertain, the gender gap widens. Women seem to need stronger proof before supporting new technologies.
Factor 2: Different Jobs, Different Risks
The second factor comes from workplace realities. Women hold more administrative, clerical, and service jobs. AI might disrupt these roles. Meanwhile, women remain scarce in science and technology fields where AI creates new opportunities.
The pattern holds even when you look at education levels:
- University-educated people: Both men and women see AI as less risky than those without degrees. They’re probably better positioned to adapt to technological change.
- The gap persists: Within each education group, women still rate AI as riskier than men do. Women with university degrees see more AI risk than men with similar qualifications. This reflects reality. Even highly educated women work in different sectors and face different workplace risks.
Support for Regulation
Women also support government intervention more strongly, especially when job losses might outweigh job gains. Men’s support for regulation barely changed across different risk scenarios. This tells us something important. Men’s policy views stay stable no matter what the employment outlook suggests. Women’s support for regulation responds directly to projected harm.
ScienceBlog.com has no paywalls, no sponsored content, and no agenda beyond getting the science right. Every story here is written to inform, not to impress an advertiser or push a point of view.
Good science journalism takes time — reading the papers, checking the claims, finding researchers who can put findings in context. We do that work because we think it matters.
If you find this site useful, consider supporting it with a donation. Even a few dollars a month helps keep the coverage independent and free for everyone.