Men use 2.5 times as many AI tokens as women inside Norway's wealth fund
Even without the heaviest users, men still use far more tokens, and nine of the 10 power users are men.
In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Friday Wrap-Up: Lessons from Google’s Former CEO and Europe’s AI Regulation ProblemInside Norway's sovereign wealth fund, men use 2.5 times as many AI tokens as women, chief executive Nicolai Tangen said.
The fund tracks AI use by counting tokens, the small chunks of text and data a chatbot reads and writes with each request. Tangen called the count an easy to measure but imperfect signal of use.
The fund checked the numbers by gender after reading a Harvard Business School study that found women were roughly 20% behind men in AI use, and found a wider gap.
Nine of the fund's 10 heaviest AI users are men. Even leaving those power users out, men still use about 60% more tokens than women, Tangen said.
He called that a worry because AI is a productivity enhancing tool, and said the fund must nurture AI use across all divisions. In a few spots, including the risk department, women are already ahead of men.
Questions people ask
What is a token?
A token is the basic unit an AI model reads or writes, roughly part of a word. A short email might be a few hundred tokens. Counting tokens is a handy way for companies to see how much employees are using AI tools.
What is Norway's sovereign wealth fund?
It is Norway's giant state savings fund, built from oil and gas profits and invested in stocks, bonds, and property around the world. Worth well over $1 trillion, it is one of the largest investors on earth. Its chief executive is Nicolai Tangen.
Does using more AI actually make people more productive?
Tangen treats AI as a productivity enhancing tool, which is why he calls the gap a worry. In office work, AI can speed up routine writing, summarizing and coding tasks. But token counts alone do not prove better results, which is why Tangen calls them only a rough signal.