Is AI Ageist and Sexist?

We’ve been promised that artificial intelligence will make our lives smarter, faster, and fairer. But what if the systems we’re trusting to eliminate bias are actually encoding it deeper into our daily experiences, especially when it comes to age and gender?

From dating apps to job recruitment platforms, AI is now the gatekeeper to many of life’s most intimate and impactful decisions. And like any gatekeeper, it has a point of view even if it’s one it inherited.

Algorithms don’t create themselves in a vacuum. They’re trained on data, data that reflects our human preferences, patterns, and, yes, prejudices. When society has historically undervalued older women or seen assertive women as “bossy” while calling men “leaders,” those patterns show up in hiring decisions, content curation, and who gets seen in a dating queue. Here’s some examples:

• A 50-year-old woman swipes right 20 times on a dating app. The algorithm notes her interest in younger matches but downgrades her profile visibility because she’s not following the “expected” pattern for her age bracket. Societal bias has now perpetuated its long history of ageism through the help of AI.

• A résumé with “30 years of experience” triggers the AI to flag the applicant as potentially “overqualified,” even though she’s perfectly aligned with the job. The number of candles on your birthday cake now have more value than the knowledge that you can bring to the table.

• Women who use assertive language in cover letters may be penalized by algorithms trained on decades of hiring data that favored male communication styles. That old cliché that women are the weaker , passive sex just won’t seem to die.

  
  

If you’re a woman over 40 trying to date online, get promoted, or land a job after a career pivot, you may be battling more than societal assumptions, you’re battling an algorithm that doesn’t even know why it’s biased against you. Remember, AI gets its data from stereotypical gender and age bias that has been accepted in society for generations. So, we need to change that data.

If you’re over 50 (or younger) and thriving, post about it. If you’re a woman who just landed a job or a date that went against the algorithm’s odds, share it. Real stories are the data AI hasn’t caught up to yet but that can be the basis for the creation of future algorithms.

Let’s stop letting hidden algorithms based on outdated assumptions write our life stories. We must reclaim the pen and write our own narratives.