Laura Bates, The New Age of Sexism (excerpts)
Read
- Introduction, pp. xi–xxii.
- “The New Age of Domestic Abuse,” pp. 181–195.
- “The New Age of Discrimination,” pp. 229–245.
(about 1.5 pages)
- Respond to the following quote from Bates:
- From Intro: “At this moment, we are poised at the edge of a precipice. Advances in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, robotics, and metaverses are about to transform our world at a scale and speed we struggle to grasp, because it has never happened before in history.” To what extent do you agree with Bates? What is she assuming about her audience? What popular beliefs is she challenging?
- “The New Age of Domestic Abuse” (pp. 181–195)
- How does Bates develop her argument about the dangers of AI girlfriends? Are there any aspects of her argument that surprise you? To what extent do you agree with her argument?
- “The New Age of Discrimination” (pp. 229–245)
- Many of us are already familiar with the argument that Large Language Models (LLMs) train on existing data, which may contain a wide range of biases and then will replicate those biases; AI may also “hallucinate,” generating false information presented in a factual and credible way. How do the examples provided by Bates help to illustrate these problems in terms of sexist bias?
- What is your own relationship to AI? What questions/issues do you have about its development and use – in education, work and other areas of society?
Attribution of Quote:
Bates, Laura. “Introduction.” In The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Reinventing Misogyny. Sourcebooks, 2025. © Laura Bates. All rights reserved. This content is excluded from our Creative Commons license. For more information, see https://ocw.mit.edu/help/faq-fair-use/.
