arXiv Computation and Language By Yining Li, Huayang Li, Lemao Liu, Taro Watanabe

On the Position Bias of Large Language Models: A Comprehensive Study

Read the original on arXiv Computation and Language →

The paper investigates position bias in large language models (LLMs) across a wide range of model sizes—from billions to trillions of parameters—and across five languages. It finds that while small-scale models and non‑English languages still exhibit noticeable position bias, larger models and the use of Chain‑of‑Thought prompting substantially reduce this bias. Additionally, the study shows that emerging thinking models with advanced reasoning capabilities are almost immune to position bias, indicating a promising but resource‑intensive path to mitigating this vulnerability.

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