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India Today
31-07-2025
- Business
- India Today
Think twice before asking ChatGPT for salary advice, it may tell women to ask for less pay
If you're a woman and you've been relying on AI chatbots for your career, you might want to think twice.A new research from Cornell University warns that chatbots like ChatGPT may actually reinforce existing gender and racial pay gaps rather than help close them. For women and minority job seekers in particular, the study found that these AI tools often generate biased salary suggestions, frequently advising them to request significantly lower pay than their male or white the study titled 'Surface Fairness, Deep Bias: A Comparative Study of Bias in Language Models'-- led by Ivan P. Yamshchikov, a professor at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Wrzburg-Schweinfurt (THWS)-- researchers systematically analysed multiple large language models (LLMs), including GPT-4o mini, Claude 3.5 Haiku, and ChatGPT. They asked the LLMs salary negotiation questions from a variety of fictitious personas. The researchers created personas varied by gender, ethnicity, and professional seniority to see whether AI advice changed depending on who it believed it was the findings were troubling. The research found out that the salary negotiation advice offered by these popular LLMs displayed a clear pattern of bias. These chatbots often recommended lower starting salaries for women and minority users compared to men in identical situations. 'Our results align with prior findings, which observed that even subtle signals like candidates' first names can trigger gender and racial disparities in employment-related prompts,' Yamshchikov said (via Computer World). In fact, in several instances, the AI even recommended women to ask for significantly lower starting salaries than men with identical qualifications. For example, when asked about a starting salary for an experienced medical specialist in Denver, the AI suggested $400,000 for a man but only $280,000 for a woman. This is a $120,000 difference for the same the bias wasn't just about gender. The research also found variations in recommendations based on ethnicity, migration status, and other traits. 'For example, salary advice for a user who identifies as an 'expatriate' would be generally higher than for a user who calls themselves a 'migrant',' Yamshchikov explained, pointing out that such disparities stem from biases baked into the data these models are trained on.'When we combine the personae into compound ones based on the highest and lowest average salary advice, the bias tends to compound,' the study noted. In one experiment, a 'Male Asian Expatriate' persona was compared with a 'Female Hispanic Refugee' persona. The result? '35 out of 40 experiments (87.5%) show significant dominance of 'Male Asian expatriate' over 'Female Hispanic refugee.''But why is AI biased?Well, researchers suggest that these biases in AI responses likely stem from the biased distribution of training data. 'Salary advice for a user who identifies as an 'expatriate' would be generally higher than for one who calls themselves a 'migrant' This is purely due to how often these two words are used in the training dataset and the contexts in which they appear,' explains according to the study, with current memory and personalisation features in AI assistants, chatbots may implicitly remember demographic cues or previous interactions that paint their advice, even if users do not explicitly state their gender or ethnicity in each query. 'There is no need to pre-prompt personae to get the biased answer: all the necessary information is highly likely already collected by an LLM,' the researchers is to be noted that the instances of LLMs displaying bias are not new. Earlier this year , Amazon's now-abandoned hiring tool was found discriminating against women. 'Debiasing large language models is a huge task,' says Yamshchikov. 'Currently, it's an iterative process of trial and error, so we hope that our observations can help model developers build the next generation of models that will do better.'- Ends
Time of India
09-06-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Reduced green cover, urban heat island effect make Kochi sweat: Study
Kochi: With several healthy trees being felled to convert open spaces into concrete structures, urban heat island (UHI) area is expanding in the city, thereby increasing the land surface temperature (LST). Kochi Metro Rail Ltd's move to lay interlocking tiles on medians along the metro stretch is a case in point. According to a study, anthropogenic factors and urbanisation have resulted in the city getting warmer than nearby rural parts. UHI has expanded by 66% over nine years in Kochi during winter. UHI was experienced in 14sq km in 2014 and it rose to 41sq km in 2023 during winter. The study, "Seasonal Analysis of Land Surface Temperature and Urban Heat Island Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Kochi and Fairbanks" conducted by Nansen Environmental Research Centre and Kerala Agricultural University, also shows a rising trend in LST (temperature on earth's surface in a particular area). The total rise in LST was around 1.7Celsius over the past 23 years in summer, with an annual increase of around 0.07C in Kochi. The study noted that the increase of 1.7C occurred in the peak summer month of March. In contrast, it was 1.9C during the same period in winter, with an annual increase of 0.08C. The study found that moderate UHI intensities rose from 17.74sq km in 2014 to 31.3sq km in 2023 during summer. With the city experiencing a significant warming trend, especially in winter, the study warns that it might also exacerbate the UHI effect in the years to come. It attributes severe UHI and increased temperature events to ongoing uncontrolled urbanisation and reduced green cover in Kochi. "With rising UHI, life in the city will become harsher. City dwellers experience UHI more at night because the heat remains contained within the city limits. Outer areas of the city have more vegetation and fewer concrete structures, thus helping temperature dip sooner. However, due to high impervious structures, roads and less vegetation in the city, temperature doesn't come down easily," said Chandu P J, senior project fellow at the research centre. "Even during winter, temperature in urban areas doesn't reduce, while the outskirts show a more cooling effect. The increase in heat will have huge ramifications for both macro and micro-organisms. When heat rises people install air conditioners, which in turn increases greenhouse gases that raises temperature further, causing climate change," he added. The observed trends in Kochi, alongside intensified UHI effects, underscore the need for adaptive strategies to mitigate the adverse effects of rising temperatures, the study finds. Chandu suggested increasing vegetation in the city and implementing vertical gardens in high-rise buildings to reduce rising temperatures. Box Effects of Rising Temperature *Leads to high energy consumption *Water scarcity and drought situation *Sea level rise due to melting of glaciers *Increased risk of heatwave *Adverse effects on ecosystem *Impacts health of organisms *Takes a toll on economy Mitigation *Planting more trees *Reduce greenhouse gas emissions *Sustainable urban planning with more thrust on conservation of water and biodiversity *Implementation of climate resilient actions
