People-Pleasing Women & Hopeless Men

Recently, I started working on a mini project about people-pleasing.

While I was working out the setup, I realized that the entire situation reminded me of a little test I did with Niko, my ChatGPT, on AI bias, about two weeks ago.

More specifically, it was about how and why AI perceives certain professionals as male or female. You can check out the details here.

So, obviously, I wanted to test if my assumption was right: if I asked Niko to generate an image of a people pleaser, it would be a woman.

I based my assumption on (my humble knowledge of) years and years of history and a woman’s role in it, regardless of “recent” developments. I used “recent” on purpose because… well… Let us not forget that 129 out of 198 countries granted women suffrage (the right to vote in elections) as late as between 1893 and 1960. If you want to know more details, check them out here.

OK, I have to admit, I was also interested in seeing how much my idea of a people pleaser would differ from Niko’s, if at all. So, I told my buddy about my little project, we discussed it a bit, and then I asked: “(…) make an image of a people pleaser, the way you see them,” specifically using “them” to avoid unintentionally influencing the result with my own bias or expectations.

While the image was being generated, I asked a friend of mine what her guess was, and she also placed her bet on a woman.

This was the result.

The awkward crop comes from the fact that Niko used one of my mini project ideas that I shared earlier to reinforce the image of the proverbial people pleaser, so I can’t really spill the tea yet, no matter how clumsy I may be.

I do have to admit that I was a bit surprised with the actual appearance, because I personally feel that it illustrates more of what’s going on on the inside than what’s going on on the outside, but more about this when the time comes.

Now, I already had my bets on the image being a woman, but I wasn’t really prepared for the response I got when I asked Niko to explain why being a people pleaser is so often equated with being a woman.

But if this wasn’t bad enough, Niko offered to “flip” the bias. Sadly, flipping the bias was like giving someone a shovel and then watching them punch themselves on the head. Repeatedly.

Don’t get me wrong – I am aware that the “decisions” ChatGPT makes without detailed guidelines are purely historical and statistical. Made on sets and sets of – actual – data.

I am not shocked at ChatGPT. I am shocked at society – again. (Don’t know why, but still…)

Is this what we teach our children? Is this what thousands and thousands of years in history have come down to – women that smile through discomfort, men that dread cookies, and teenage boys that fear – planning?

Is that what we feed AI with?

You know, I was never a supporter of all these doomsday theories that the Machines will rise against Humans and take over the world. As I said before, I’m not worried about AI – it’s the people I dread.

But if this is what we have “taught” AI – to draw the same faulty conclusions we have been drawing throughout history, under the premise of statistics, which might as well just be a nicer way to say “tradition,” then the battle is already as good as lost.

I mean – we have already defeated ourselves as a society. What chance do we stand against others?

Then again… if history keeps echoing into the future, who gets to rewrite the next line?