The fact that more men than women work in the tech field likely skews the data. Men generally have more knowledge about generative AI and greater access to these tools, which contributes to higher usage of ChatGPT among men compared to women.
I’m surprised by this. As a woman who uses ChatGPT extensively every day—for work, cooking, and various other needs, including book recommendations—I’ve largely stopped using Google for searches. I’ve noticed that some of my female friends seem unaware of what ChatGPT can do, which might explain their lower usage.
I used ChatGPT a lot until I figured out where it’s actually useful for me—mainly refining writing. I’m not interested in outsourcing my thinking, since I have a brain and AI doesn’t, and I enjoy the serendipity of searching for answers most of the time, unless I have something really specific to solve.
My grandmother uses ChatGPT like a thesaurus to find words she’s forgotten, and my mum has used it a few times and understands its utility. But I don’t think she’s that motivated to use it—sometimes it’s just easier to do your own thinking rather than editing AI.
I agree with this. I think it largely comes down to the tech field. Most of my friends, regardless of gender, who work in other fields have only heard about ChatGPT. I don’t recall anyone actually using it or even asking me about it.
I had this conversation with some female coworkers (we all work in tech). We feel guilty when we rely too much on ChatGPT for coding, and we find it lacks empathy for writing messages. For example, I wouldn’t use it to write Slack messages or emails to coworkers because I don’t want them to feel like I don’t care.
We also notice very obvious use of ChatGPT in the code and emails/messages from our male coworkers, especially in emails. It’s a bit embarrassing because they use vocabulary they normally wouldn’t (none of us are native English speakers). These might be a few reasons why.