Fanning the Pay Gap Flames with Artificial Intelligence and Alternative Facts

There's a new AI ChatBot that promises to help women "ask for and get the raise you deserve."

CindyBot is here to get you your money, plain and simple, by arming you with salary information and helping you develop a negotiating strategy.

This latest weapon in the war against the gender pay gap is an AI version of Cindy Gallop, the British advertising consultant who, according to Mashable, "swears like a sailor and is a pro at dishing out career advice, especially for women." 

Your consultation with the AI begins with an introduction from CindyBot:

"Let me start by saying that talking about your salary may feel awkward. Jam those feelings down the nearest garbage disposal. You ready to get the money you deserve?"

From there, CindyBot asks you about your job title, how long you've been in that position, and your employer's zip code. She returns the average salary for someone in your role and location (I'm assuming this salary information comes from PayScale, one of the partner organizations behind CindyBot's creation). According to some users, this average salary information is quickly followed by a memorable quote from CindyBot:

It's good to know the facts, but it's better to make a sh*t ton of money.

(Side note: when I tried CindyBot, she provided we with an average salary for my position and stated "But that doesn't matter does it? Because you aren't average.")

CindyBot gets you ready to make a sh*t ton of money by helping you prepare a negotiation strategy. She asks questions like "how are you exceeding expectations?" and reduces your negotiation strategy into bullet points. She then encourages you to go and demand more money either by asking yourself WWASWGD (what would a straight white guy do?) or by visualizing what Gallop herself would do: "prepare, present my reasons, get paid. A lot." 

I had a visceral response to CindyBot when it was released on April 4th (a.k.a. Equal Pay Day) this year, and I've been trying to process and organize my thoughts about CindyBot for the last two months. A post on entitlement from my Cafe colleague Jim Brennan helped me to clarify my thinking and come to the following conclusion: I don't like CindyBot, and she may be doing more harm than good.

I can overlook the Bot's (confident? hardline?) personality, the use of four-letter words, and perhaps even the WWASWGD philosophy; for others, this may be a deal-breaker. What I can't overlook is the sense of entitlement CindyBot could be breeding and the alternative facts users may be creating for themselves because of their interactions with her.

Right from the start, CindyBot's introductory question "you ready to get the money you deserve?" sets a tone of entitlement. This tone permeates the user's interactions with CindyBot. For example, she asks the user how she is exceeding expectations. This is certainly a valid question to consider when contemplating and preparing for a conversation about a raise. However, CindyBot can't provide meaningful insight into the user's response. Instead, she simply assumes the user is exceeding expectations in a meaningful way.

Whether the user responds with "I've grown revenue from existing clients by 15%, well above my target of 3% growth" or "I always replace the water cooler bottle when I take the last of the water" CindyBot always comes back with the participation trophy of performance conversations: "That's great. You're a boss." There is no ability to differentiate, so everyone wins and everyone's a boss.

In real life, not everyone is a boss. Not everyone is above average (this would violate the laws of mathematics). Not everyone is underpaid. And even if you are underpaid, compared to the average, you cannot automatically assume it's because of gender discrimination.

Thinking in this way can lead us to create alternative facts about ourselves and our performance. Believing you're exceptional and entitled to a raise when you're not can distort our understanding of the gender pay gap and our relationship to it. Consider the following quote from a Refinery29 article about CindyBot:

"The British advertising consultant and entrepreneur has launched a chatbot that will help you ask for and get the raise you deserve. Because as we all know, women are still making 80 cents to a man's dollar and no amount of variables such as experience or child-rearing makes up for the fact that many industries simply choose to pay women less because they can."

As an economist who has studied gender pay gaps professionally since 1999, I can tell you that gender discrimination is real and it does occur. I can also tell you that there is an abundance of empirical evidence indicating that relevant work experience, periods of absence from the labor force, tradeoffs between cash compensation and benefits, etc., have an impact on worker pay. Assuming a woman isn't getting the money she deserves simply because she is a woman is just as unfair as paying a woman less than a similarly situated man simply because she is a woman.

The problem I see is CindyBot itself, not Cindy Gallop or the many individuals working to educate women about how to assess their pay vis-a-vis comparator employees and cultivate their negotiating skills. When asked about why she created CindyBot, Gallop said that it "enables me to scale myself, and help every single woman I can to get the pay raise she deserves." Her motivation is noble, and I'm sure the help she provides to women in-person is invaluable. The breakdown happens in the scaling; CindyBot is not capable of providing recommendations based on a raw, real assessment of an individual user's situation.

This raw, real assessment, which sometimes involves telling people they're not exceptional and not entitled to a raise, is the only way to solve the gender pay gap.

Stephanie Thomas, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Cornell University. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on economic theory and labor economics in the College of Arts and Sciences and in Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Throughout her career, Stephanie has completed research on a variety of topics including wage determination, pay gaps and inequality, and performance-based compensation systems. She frequently provides expert commentary in media outlets such as The New York Times, CBC, and NPR, and has published papers in a variety of journals.

Comments

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Great observations, Stephanie! The Brit's advice reminds me of my ancient "I Deserve a Raise" piece published here exactly seven years ago. Agree with all your points; but I wonder how often those WASP men who request a raise are rebuffed with those brutally honest final words of rejection you offered? As you suggest, only when the male halo effect ends will the final ~12% gender pay inequity disappear.

[Tricia]

I tried it out this morning. There is very little AI to this bot. I supplied an outrageous desired salary and the bot agreed without conditions.

[Molly]

What a clever little tool (sarcasm); that offers absolutely nothing. Stuff like this does nothing to offer serious solutions. Might be fun/funny to play with once and make someone feel pumped up, but beyond that....

[Jack Loring]

Stephanie, I appreciate your thoughtful assessment of CindyBot and the context with Jim's reflections on entitlement.

Through your work, you're helping compensation professionals like me fight the good fight.