Harvard survey: men overclaim AI knowledge, recognize fictional AI executives
A survey of more than 5,400 Americans released by Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center found that 73% of male respondents said they knew who OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was, and 53% claimed to know Mira Murati, Susan Milner and Craig Dalton — the latter two are fictional. Men reported using AI more often and answered slightly more factual AI questions correctly, but men and women erred at roughly the same rate; the gap came from women saying they were unsure more often (3.3 of 12 questions on average, versus 2.3 for men). Over a year of coverage, men were named in AI headlines more than 14 times as often as women, and three-quarters of quoted subject experts were men, above the roughly 29% share of women in the AI talent pool. Both genders rated concern as their top emotion about AI, though women reported more fear and worry while men rated every positive feeling higher.
It quantifies who gets to shape AI narratives, linking an expert-representation gap with overconfidence and suggesting media and industry should amplify more women experts and admit uncertainty.
Say you’re a guy who reads WIRED—you know a thing or two about artificial intelligence. You recognize the names of well-known people developing AI, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. But do you know who Mira Murati is? What about Susan Milner? Craig Dalton?
In a new survey of more than 5,400 Americans, 73 percent of male respondents told Harvard researchers they knew who Altman was. A little over half—53 percent—said they knew of Murati, Milner, and Dalton.
There’s one problem. Murati is a real person: she’s the former CTO of OpenAI and the current CEO of Thinking Machine Labs. Milner and Dalton, on the other hand, do not exist.
Compared to women, “we're seeing that men are more optimistic and more confident” across the board when it comes to AI, Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center executive director Laura Manley tells WIRED. Sometimes, that veers into overconfidence—like claiming to recognize fictional AI executives. (For context, 40 percent of women claimed to know who Milner and Dalton were; 38 percent said they recognized Murati.)
While Manley notes that men are more overconfident in general when surveyed, the report, published on Wednesday, digs into what the confidence gap on AI looks like, as well as the repercussions of gendered divides.
#Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center#Sam Altman#OpenAI#Mira Murati#Thinking Machine Labs