Can Artificial Intelligence Improve Gender Equality? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Gender discrimination in education hinders women's representation in various fields. How to create a gender-neutral learning environment when teachers' gender composition and mindset are slow to change? Artificial Intelligence (AI)'s recent development provides a way to achieve this goal, as engineers can make AI trainers gender-neutral and not take gender-related information as input. We use data from a natural experiment where such AI trainers replace some human teachers for a male-dominated strategic board game to test the effectiveness of AI training. The introduction of AI improves teaching outcomes for boys and girls and reduces the pre-existing gender gap. Survey responses indicate AI's information advantage, friendly appearance, and interactive features helped students to learn faster, and class recordings suggest that AI trainers' non-discriminatory emotional status can explain the improvement in gender equality. We demonstrate AI's potential in improving learning outcomes and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in analogous settings.