Date
Publisher
arXiv
How the general public perceives scientists has been of interest to science educators for decades. While there can be many factors of it, the impact of recent generative artificial intelligence (AI) models is noteworthy, as these are rapidly changing how people acquire information. This report presents the pilot study examining how modern generative AI represents images of scientist using the Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST). As a data, 1,100 images of scientist were generated using Midjourney v 6.1. One hundred of these images were analyzed by a science education scholar using a DAST scoring rubric. Using the data, the researcher went through prompt engineering to instruct gpt-4.1-mini to automatically analyze the remaining 1,000 images. The results show that generative AI represents stereotypical images of scientists, such as lab coat (97%), eyeglasses (97%), male gender (81%), and Caucasian (85%) in the 100 images analyzed by the researcher. However, gpt-4.1-mini could also detect those stereotypes in the accuracy of 79% in the same 100 images. gpt-4.1-mini also analyzed the remaining 1,000 images and found stereotypical features in the images (lab coat: 97%, eyeglasses: 95%, male gender: 82%, Caucasian: 67%). Discussions on the biases residing in today's generative AI and their implications on science education were made. The researcher plans to conduct a more comprehensive future study with an expanded methodology.
Study at a glance
- Question: Does generative AI create stereotypical images of scientists, and can AI detect those stereotypes?
- Setting and data: 1,100 images of scientists generated using Midjourney v 6.1.
- Method: Human scoring of 100 images using a rubric and automated AI analysis of the remaining 1,000 images.
Why it matters
How the general public perceives scientists has interested science educators for decades. Because recent generative AI models are rapidly changing how people acquire information, their impact on representations of scientists is noteworthy.
Key findings
- Generative AI produces stereotypical scientist images, depicting figures who are predominantly Caucasian (85%), male (81%), wearing lab coats (97%), and wearing eyeglasses (97%).
- An AI tool reliably detected visual stereotypes in scientist images, closely matching evaluations by a human researcher.
- AI-generated scientist images consistently reflected stereotypes across 1,000 images, portraying figures as mostly male (82%), Caucasian (67%), and wearing eyeglasses (95%).
Summary drafted with AI from the paper’s abstract and may contain errors. See the full paper for details.
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