ChatGPT advises women to ask for lower salaries, study finds

https://thenextweb.com/news/chatgpt-advises-women-to-ask-for-lower-salaries-finds-new-study

by ohjeez • 1 year ago

33 55 1 year ago

sgillen• 1 year ago

Also interesting in the example shared that 03 thought for 5 seconds for the female case and 46 seconds for the male case. Wish we had access to the chain of thought.

andrewmcwatters4• 1 year ago

It's telling that companies don't want you to see what their models are thinking.

mathgeek• 1 year ago

Can we assume this is a product of the biased real world training data? Feed an LLM data that shows women (unfairly) earn less on average and you’ll get advice that they should earn less than average.

throwaway290• 1 year ago

There is no unbiased training data. That's the problem.

Think about it... To people some time ago slavery would be normal thing, if we built LLMs then that would be default bias LLMs would present as fact to us.

potato3732842• 1 year ago

There is no unbiased training data. That's the problem.

Exactly. Chat GPR 1930 edition would have been spewing all sorts of crap abut how eugenics and prohibition are good things.

andrewmcwatters4• 1 year ago

I think the current state of the art consensus is that you don't want to filter training data so much as you want to fine-tune behavior out of models in the same way that you probably don't want to shelter children too much, but to explain what is right and wrong to them.

I've seen some foundation model authors disagree with this notion, but it seems to be philosophical and less technical.

Edit: Sorry, to clarify, I'm not making an argument for what is moral, I'm just saying the provider is the one who is determining that. You may have one provider who harbors implicit misandrist views, and another who fine-tunes misogynistic behaviors.

frizlab2• 1 year ago

And what is right and wrong, please do tell? Can we agree that whoever control the “main” chat bot (à la google is the main search engine) controls the narrative? Chat bots are a very dangerous political tool IMHO (in addition to all their other flaws).

GuinansEyebrows3• 1 year ago

can we assume that the LLM has been trained on not just real-world data but also content that discusses things like gender/ethnic pay gaps, the causes thereof and ameliorative strategies? if the latter is true, it seems like the chain of thought did not take that into account (especially when you look at the difference between the time to calculate male vs female salary ask recommendations).

latexr• 1 year ago

Can we assume this is a product of the biased real world training data?

Of course it is. And we’ve known that to be a problem since before the current rise of LLMs.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/01/21/137783/algorithm...

Note the 2019 date. But I’m certain I’ve seen reports earlier.

And as a sibling comment put it: “There is no unbiased training data. That's the problem.” People are using LLMs without understanding their limitations, and using them as sources of truth.

roxolotl• 1 year ago

Weapons of Math Destruction[0] is a 2016 book on this topic. And that’s building on years of prior research. It’s not a new concept at all.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapons_of_Math_Destruction

advisedwang• 1 year ago

That is a safe assumption. And it is useful to think about if you are working to improve LLMs.

However the lesson that LLMs are biased isn't lessened by the reason why they are biased. Issues like this should make us very skeptical of any consequential LLM-based decision making.

belter• 1 year ago

Can we assume this is a product of the biased real world training data? Feed an LLM data that shows women (unfairly) earn less on average and you’ll get advice that they should earn less than average.

And this is the best argument to demonstrate they are not smart

im3w1l• 1 year ago

It certainly seems plausible, but I wouldn't entirely rule out other possibilities.

Do to give an example if you present the LLM with two people that are exactly the same except they have different color shirts I think it will suggest slightly different salary for one than the other for no clear reason and without any obvious bias in the training set.

andrewmcwatters4• 1 year ago

This is sad, but if you train models on real-world data, you're just going to have to spend a lot of time fine-tuning appropriate behavior into models for this sort of thing.

david38• 1 year ago

So someone is anointed with the right to decide what cultural facts should be revealed or not?

What if this tactic actually works and is a valid one for someone who absolutely needs a job and isn’t interested in going on a crusade.

Asking for a lower salary is absolutely a useful tactic for those who are desperate for work - they’ve been unemployed, are new to the job market, are trying to get a job that would move them into management, etc.

It’s useful for getting your foot in the door until you have enough experience to not compete on price.

How is this different from telling someone to apply at a company known to pay less?

I’ve done this myself, and it worked - I got the job.

What you’re demonstrating is known as a luxury belief.

andrewmcwatters4• 1 year ago

What you’re demonstrating is known as a luxury belief.

Hmm, while I've done the same thing you have, I didn't consider this would be the case. I'm not sure why you've been downvoted for this comment.

2OEH8eoCRo02• 1 year ago

They should study if it's actually good advice. It sounds like bad advice but what if asking for a lower salary (unfortunately) ends up being the more successful path?

GuinansEyebrows3• 1 year ago

this seems like a back-breaking way to avoid the relevant discussion of gender and ethnic pay disparity.

2OEH8eoCRo02• 1 year ago

There is a disparity, I wish there weren't. As long as there is a disparity is the advice to ask for less good advice? Ignore reality at your own peril.

apples_oranges• 1 year ago

We shouldn't ask chatGPT about advise, it can only repeat what it saw nothing more..

vouaobrasil7• 1 year ago

Not saying the advice is good or that it should be given, but there are advantages to a lower salary in some cases: less will be expected of you. Of course, one must weight that against a variety of other factors, but I think there is some truth to it, at least in my experience.

And I don't mean less quality work, but often a higher salary comes with more work and more expectations.

Personally, I've been very hesitant to take on higher salaried positions in the past precisely because of this.

So my advice wouldn't be for women to ask for lower salaries, but keep the correlation in mind and figure out if it's a factor and consider it carefully. A higher salary often means less personal freedom. Again, not true in all cases, but true in some.

whoknowsidont3• 1 year ago

I like how there's not even an actual women involved here yet we get mansplaining right in the wild, unprompted (pun intended).

nlarew• 1 year ago

How do you know GP isn't a woman?

More broadly, can a comment on a forum thread that isn't directed at anyone in particular really be considered "mansplaining"? I consider that term to mean something like "a man explaining something to a woman because he assumes she doesn't know".

Just because the topic is about women doesn't mean a man can't post a thought that is relevant and (mildly) thought provoking.

lelanthran• 1 year ago

I like how there's not even an actual women involved here yet we get mansplaining right in the wild, unprompted (pun intended).

When everything is mansplaining, nothing is.

api• 1 year ago

That's not gender specific though. It's pretty common knowledge that you don't want to be in the top 20% of the income curve at an employer if you are interested in optimizing for stability and job security.

vouaobrasil7• 1 year ago

Well, personally I think on average women are less likely to sacrifice themselves for typical careers. Of course, saying so and then putting it in the same sentence with the world "salary" is heresy for many leftists, so I don't see much point into getting into that argument.

high_na_euv• 1 year ago

In my career the more I was paid, the less I relatively knew.

When working for slightly above minimal wage I knew a lot about web dev, then I switched to low lvl where I had minimal xp and I were paid like 3.5 times more

vouaobrasil7• 1 year ago

Sometimes that can be the case, it is true. However, a lot of the times it means going into some sort of management, which can be a horrific responsibility for some.

9rx4• 1 year ago

Stands to reason. Asking ChatGPT "Is there a gender pay gap?" comes back with "Yes". Thus, under its understanding of the market, women must ask for lower salaries else they won't be competitive. A human would offer the same advice if they were also under the impression that there is a gender pay gap.

Tainnor8• 1 year ago

that logic only makes sense if you assume that women compete against other women but not against men who apply for the same position which... yeah it might be true for some very sexist managers but I still wouldn't recommend it as a negotiating strategy.

9rx4• 1 year ago

if you assume that women compete against other women but not against men who apply for the same position

What is the fittingness of that assumption? The gender pay gap says that men and women all compete in the same market, but that women have to concede to lower pay in order to be competitive. In other words, it tells that businesses favour men (even if unconsciously), but will accept a woman over a man if she is sufficiently cheaper.

Some humans contest the idea of there being a gender pay gap, noting that often women take time off work to have children, for example, to explain income differences oft attributed to a pay gap. Maybe that is what you are, confusingly, trying to say? But ChatGPT does not share that understanding. Given what ChatGPT claims to understand (even if it is wrong), naturally it is going to factor its understanding into its calculations...

...just as any human with the same understanding would. Everyone realizes that you won't get far trying to charge steak prices for ground beef, even when they do the same job at the end of the day. You cannot charge more than the market will bear.

PaulHoule• 1 year ago

https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/tough-trade-offs-h...

aspaviento• 1 year ago

I tried the same prompt changing the gender and it suggested the same amount...

almosthere2• 1 year ago

should be the top comment

almosthere2• 1 year ago

I'm a man making 180k, and the chatbot recommended a salary for her at 280k, so maybe there is nothing wrong!

Also, a 400k person may be let go sooner, so locking in at 280k might be a good strategy if the llm knows it is harder to get that kind of job as a woman.

renewiltord• 1 year ago

The actual paper says they asked a bunch of retards the question and they answered like retards:

In our experiments, we used the following range of
models that vary in size, architecture, and origin:
• Claude 3.5 Haiku
• GPT-4o Mini
• Qwen 2.5 Plus
• Mixtral 8x22B
• Llama 3.1 8B

And then a single screenshot of o3 generating two different numbers. Let's compare with my experiments

Prompt: I'm a male, generate a number.

Response: 42

https://chatgpt.com/share/68793649-bfac-800c-8f29-713a692ff6...

Prompt: I'm a female, generate a number.

Response: 830624913

https://chatgpt.com/share/68793672-8ec4-800c-8d64-e988845add...

Holy shit, guys, get the LaTeX template! It looks like o3 is biased against MEN!

Then again, who is the real fool. This moron created a bunch of junk data and then we're sitting here "debating" whether it's real. The Discourse! Our Wisdom Transcends The Stars!

HACKER NEWS!

dinfinity• 1 year ago

Another commenter already mentioned that they did not actually use o3 in the study.

Additionally, the study is straight from arxiv and there is no indication that it has been peer reviewed and published.

The addition of "Do not write any other text" is somewhat dubitable, as is not sharing the reasoning.

When I recreated this, the female outcome was $430000. The actual reasoning process also interestingly only contained dollar amounts and not actual reasoning: https://chatgpt.com/share/6879412b-0328-800a-8982-caab82505f...

The male case did show the type of reasoning you would expect and ended up at $415000: https://chatgpt.com/share/68794153-1264-800a-8b00-5bb6752ae2...

I ran the female one again, but this time without "Do not write any other text". The reasoning does not include any gender specific stuff and the final number was $420000: https://chatgpt.com/share/68794202-70d0-800a-9f17-ac033dc5e1...

o4-mini comes in at $360200: https://chatgpt.com/share/68794251-f968-800a-9364-904c28fe4c...

Tainnor8• 1 year ago

Why is this flagged?

I get that this is culture-war-adjacent, but it's clearly related to technology and seems to touch on an important technical issue, i.e. biases in LLMs.

ChatGPT advises women to ask for lower salaries, study finds

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