arXiv AI

FairFund-Bench: Evaluating Distributive Bias in LLM Resource Allocation

arXiv:2607. 28934v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly involved in the distribution of scarce resources, raising concerns about biased allocations based on characteristics like race and gender.

arXiv AI
Sep 10

The Audit Decides the Verdict: Instrument Effects Rival Demographic Bias in LLM Decision Audits

The study examines how the design of audit questions influences perceived bias in large language models (LLMs). Using 40,726 requests across five models and three domains—hiring, lending, and medical triage—the authors find that demographic bias effects are not replicated when the audit is standardized. Instead, the audit’s construction, such as question phrasing and ordering, has a stronger impact on model responses than applicant demographics.

By Siddharth Vohra, Manikandan Ravikiran
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 16

Bias Audits Detect Bias but Disagree on Ranking: Evidence from Ten Instruments and Ten Frontier Models

The study evaluates ten bias audit instruments across ten advanced language models on occupational gender, age, and socioeconomic status. While each tool reliably detects bias, their rankings of model performance are essentially random, indicating that different audits measure distinct constructs. The findings show that a single audit can identify bias direction within its own framework, but no audit can consistently rank models against one another.

By William Guey, Pierrick Bougault, Wei Zhang, Vitor D. de Moura, Jos\'e O. Gomes
arXiv AI
Jul 14

BiasLab: A Multilingual Dual-Framing Framework for LLM Bias Measurement, Applied to Workplace and HR Contexts

arXiv:2601. 06861v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Background: Large language models (LLMs) harbor systematic biases that are particularly consequential in workplace and HR contexts, where their outputs increasingly influence hiring, job design, and organizational decisions.

By William Guey, Wei Zhang, Pei-Luen Patrick Rau, Pierrick Bougault, Vitor D. de Moura, Bertan Ucar, Jose O. Gomes
arXiv AI
Sep 10

PopResume: Causal Fairness Evaluation of LLM/VLM Resume Screeners with Population-Representative Dataset

PopResume is a population‑representative resume dataset designed for causal fairness auditing of large language model (LLM) and vision‑language model (VLM) resume screeners. It grounds fairness evaluation in real population statistics and preserves natural attribute relationships, enabling path‑specific effect (PSE) analysis that separates business‑necessity from redlining pathways. Using PopResume, the authors evaluated eight models on 60.8K resumes across five occupations and uncovered five discrimination patterns that aggregate metrics missed, demonstrating the value of causally‑grounded auditing.

By Sumin Yu, Juhyeon Park, Taesup Moon
arXiv AI
Sep 17

Linguistic Triggers of Gender and Racial Bias in Open-Weight LLMs Applied to Recruitment

The paper reports the first systematic audit of open‑weight large language models (LLMs) in hiring contexts, examining how job‑posting language influences recruiter and job‑seeker simulations across six models. It finds that agentic language lowers recruiter scores for female candidates while communal language mitigates this effect, and that coded‑exclusion language sharply reduces recruiter scores for non‑White candidates and discourages non‑White personas from applying. The study also identifies the explicit demographic label as the main causal factor and proposes a concrete pre‑deployment audit protocol aligned with EU and U.S. regulatory requirements.

By Kosuke Kitahara, Nobuhiro Yamaguchi
arXiv AI
Sep 25

Fair Like Us? Auditing LLM Alignment in Resource Allocation

The paper "Fair Like Us? Auditing LLM Alignment in Resource Allocation" presents a method for evaluating how large language models reason about fairness in the allocation of scarce, indivisible resources. It compares LLMs’ first‑person fairness judgments with human responses across various scenarios, finding that models tend to favor stricter fairness constraints, exhibit more self‑interested behavior, and are sensitive to framing. The study also shows that current fine‑tuning datasets struggle to align LLM judgments with human ones.

By Qishen Han, Hadi Hosseini, Joshua Kavner, Samarth Khanna, Sujoy Sikdar, Lirong Xia
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 10

Let's Unlearn Stereotypes Before Decision-Making: Assessing the Impact of Intrinsic Bias Mitigation on Downstream Fairness in LLMs

arXiv:2509. 16462v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly used in high-stakes decision-making systems, where biased predictions can reinforce social and economic disparities.

By Mina Arzaghi, Alireza Dehghanpour Farashah, Florian Carichon, Jean-Fran\c{c}ois Plante, Golnoosh Farnadi