Gender disparities in the impact of generative artificial intelligence: Evidence from academia

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT has substantially increased individuals' productivity. In this study, we adopt a difference-in-differences approach to analyze a large dataset of research preprints to systematically examine whether the advent of generative AI has distinct effects on the productivity of male and female academic researchers. We find that after the emergence of ChatGPT, the increase in the productivity of male researchers is 6.4% higher than that of female researchers, implying a widening of the productivity gap between them. We then conduct a survey about researchers' use of ChatGPT and find that male researchers use generative AI more frequently and experience higher efficiency improvement from its use than female researchers. Our findings show the unintended consequences of generative AI and point to the need for institutions to consider its differential effects on productivity to ensure fairness when evaluating faculty members.