arXiv Computation and Language
1d ago

Which Demographics do LLMs Default to During Annotation?

arXiv:2410.08820v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Demographics and cultural background of annotators influence the labels they assign in text annotation -- for instance, an elderly woman might find...

By Johannes Sch\"afer, Aidan Combs, Christopher Bagdon, Jiahui Li, Nadine Probol, Lynn Greschner, Sean Papay, Yarik Menchaca Resendiz, Aswathy Velutharambath, Amelie W\"uhrl, Sabine Weber, Roman Klinger
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 1

Different Demographic Cues Yield Inconsistent Conclusions About LLM Personalization and Bias

The paper examines how large language models (LLMs) respond to different demographic cues—such as names—when users seek advice, focusing on race and gender in a U.S. context. It finds that using different cues for the same group leads to only partially overlapping changes in model responses, producing inconsistent conclusions about personalization and unstable bias metrics. The authors argue that LLMs react to linguistic signals tied to cues rather than to stable demographic categories, and they call for evaluations that use multiple cues and consider underlying mechanisms.

By Manuel Tonneau, Neil K. R. Sehgal, Niyati Malhotra, Sharif Kazemi, Victor Orozco-Olvera, Ana Mar\'ia Mu\~noz Boudet, Lakshmi Subramanian, Samuel P. Fraiberger, Sharath Chandra Guntuku, Valentin Hofmann
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 2

Evaluating Second-Order Bias of LLMs Through Epistemic Entitlement

The paper introduces a novel framework for assessing second‑order bias in large language models (LLMs), defined as bias in how an LLM judges the acceptability of biased content. Using principles from entitlement epistemology, the authors design a reasoning task that asks LLMs to determine whether a biased text is acceptable for specific demographic groups, and propose two metrics to quantify biased judgments. Experiments on both open‑source and closed‑source models reveal that the task bypasses safety guardrails, uncovers systematic variations across target groups, and demonstrates that models still rely on demographic labels when evaluating bias.

By Ramaravind Kommiya Mothilal, Terry Jingchen Zhang, Raiyan Ahmed, Zhijing Jin, Shion Guha, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed