AI boom accelerates tech, may leave women & interns behind

In February 2025, the Harvard Business Review published an article stating that women are adapting to generative AI at a significantly slower rate than men.

They reported that many women were concerned they would be judged if it seemed they relied on AI to assist their work. Additionally, more men were adapting to these tools and advancing their careers. For this, women's careers may suffer, the HBR said.

This paper lit a spark of curiosity for The Adaptavist Group's (TAG) report on who benefits most from AI in the workplace, CTO Jon Mort told TechDay. This month, TAG reported women and low-income employees would see the least benefit from AI innovations.

Out of 4,000 employees from Canada, the UK, the United States, and Germany, 1,000 were Canadians.

TAG found that out of these countries' workforce, 43 per cent use AI tools daily, reporting usage of 11 times or more per week. With that, only 34 per cent of women received more than five hours of training, compared to 51 per cent of men.

"Our research makes it clear that AI has the potential to unlock huge value for both workers and their organisations, but right now, that opportunity isn't equally shared," says Mort. "We're also seeing worrying gaps when it comes to gender, with women getting less training and guidance on how to use AI tools effectively, despite the clear link between training and better outcomes."

Morts says that good AI training provides workers with a foundation to effectively utilise tools that are becoming increasingly deployed across various industries. 

According to the report, three-quarters of Canadians with over 20 hours of AI training felt comfortable proving the efficiency of their AI tools, compared to 48 per cent of those with just three to five hours of training.

Adaptavist Group states that when workplace culture fails to provide equal training on AI, it puts women in a more vulnerable position when job security comes into play. 

"The training aspect is a massively important part of this, because if you're a larger organisation, you've probably got more resources to be able to set up how you can be using these tools…how do we improve efficiency, or how do we improve our output to our customers?" says Mort. "And with smaller businesses, there tends to be a little bit more pressure and less time to improve."

With AI Agents like Salesforce's Agentforce and Oracle's Fusion Cloud Applications Suite, businesses of all sizes can improve efficiency by embracing automation from research to appointment scheduling. Lower-salaried and entry-level employees are also at a disadvantage, as they may fall behind, lose tasks or even lose their jobs.

87 per cent of men at "C-level" were effectively trained on how to use AI at work, compared to 77 per cent of women in the same role.

TAG's report links to a Times headline: "Entry-level jobs plunge by a third since launch of Chat-GPT." It suggests that since the launch of OpenAI's learning model in November 2022, intern job postings have fallen 32 per cent in the UK.

In Canada, young workers are struggling to gain a foothold in their careers as they begin their professional lives.

Sophie Luo, a student from the Ivey Business School, is an intern at Amazon in Toronto. She's concerned about her full-time job prospects once her internship is over. Although she is unsure if the lack of entry-level jobs is directly correlated to the rise of LLMs like ChatGPT, Luo feels the importance of learning to use AI tools in the workplace.

In January, Amazon's AWS published its "Responsible AI Policy," outlining the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning by its employees. "

For now, the policy suggests that AI is a tool for humans, rather than a tool to replace them. "You and your end users are responsible for all decisions made, advice given, actions taken, and failures to take action based on your use of AI/ML Services," states the policy.

TAG's report suggests that to unlock the full potential of AI, organisations must move beyond promoting the use of tools and build an AI strategy.

Luo sees Amazon embracing the use of AI in the workplace. "I think we're very pro AI here. Unsurprisingly, I think most tech companies are." Adding, for security reasons, Amazon employees use the company's proprietary GPT.

"[The survey says] the amount of time saved by AI was like 11 hours a week. So if you're able to do that across your work, across your workforce, that could be a significant saving. That goes up with the amount of training that's available," says Mort.

For Luo, she felt ready to use AI. The Ivey Business School is very positive about the use of AI. Last month, it established its first generative AI teaching fellowship.

The AI boom is already underway. Mort says teaching all staff how to use it effectively is key. "Get your folk trained and make sure everyone gets it."