THE PROBLEM: WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?
To see how gender shapes the representation of AI scientists on screen, we analysed the 142 most influential films featuring AI from 1920 to 2020, of which 86 showed one or more AI researchers, totalling 116 individuals. We found that:
Only 9 out of 116 (8%) AI professionals in influential films were female (8 scientists, 1 CEO).
The first film to feature a female AI creator is from 1997.
The proportion of AI scientists and engineers who are portrayed as men in mainstream films (92%) is even higher than the percentage of men in the AI workforce (78%).
Only 1% of directors in our corpus presented as women at the time their films came out (2 films out of 142) and in both instances, they worked with co-directors who presented as men. None of the 142 AI films were solely directed by a woman.
Out of the 116 AI scientists, 38 (33%) were coded as geniuses. 37 out of the 38 geniuses shown in films were male. Due to the ‘brilliance bias’, this portrayal of AI scientists as geniuses may discourage women’s career aspirations in the AI sector.
AI scientists were frequently pictured as part of traditionally masculine institutions, such as large corporations or the military. A significant number of films (19, or 22%) feature male creators who aim to create artificial life.
Gender inequality also shapes how women are represented on screen. Out of the eight female AI scientists, 50% (4) were presented as inferior to or subservient to a man.
Gender inequality in the AI industry is systemic and pervasive. One crucial aspect relates to cultural stereotypes of who is suited to a career in AI. Mainstream films are an enormously influential source and amplifier of these cultural stereotypes.
Previous research has established that (a) cultural stereotypes and representations of scientists and engineers influence the ability of women to access and flourish in STEM fields, (b) such representations in popular media are overwhelmingly male, and (c) films directed by men are less likely to feature female protagonists. However, until now there has been no large-scale study of how AI scientists have been represented on screen.
This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the state of gender representation in AI films. This includes both who is in front of the camera i.e. the gender of the AI scientists and engineers on screen, and who is behind the camera, i.e. who is in charge of directing prominent and popular films about AI. It is based on a study conducted from 2020-2021 by a team of four researchers at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. More details about the methodology and results can be found in our article in the journal Public Understanding of Science (DOI 10.1177/09636625231153985).
THE PROBLEM: WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?
Women are grossly underrepresented in the field of AI.
Globally, only 22% of AI professionals are female (Howard and Isbell, 2020), as opposed to 39% across all STEM fields (Hammond et al., 2020).
Women comprise only 12% of authors at leading AI conferences, while the AI Index 2018 reported that men comprise more than 80% of AI professors (Shoham et al., 2018; Simonite, 2018).
Women are often confined to lower-paid, lower-status roles such as software quality assurance, rather than prestigious sub-fields such as machine learning (Young et al., 2021: 23–25).
Women’s participation in the AI workforce in the United Kingdom is decreasing (M West et al., 2019).
To read the report in full, check below:
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