2024/05/08 by Preetam Prabhu Srikar Dammu, Hayoung Jung, Dammu, Preetam Prabhu Srikar +7 · 9 citations
Computer Science · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #Computers and Society (cs.CY) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #Machine Learning (cs.LG)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2405.05378
openalex publication_date 2024/05/08 · openalex created_date 2024/05/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as an integral part of modern societies, powering user-facing applications such as personal assistants and enterprise applications like recruitment tools. Despite their utility, research indicates that LLMs perpetuate systemic biases. Yet, prior works on LLM harms predominantly focus on Western concepts like race and gender, often overlooking cultural concepts from other parts of the world. Additionally, these studies typically investigate "harm" as a singular dimension, ignoring the various and subtle forms in which harms manifest. To address this gap, we introduce the Covert Harms and Social Threats (CHAST), a set of seven metrics grounded in social science literature. We utilize evaluation models aligned with human assessments to examine the presence of covert harms in LLM-generated conversations, particularly in the context of recruitment. Our experiments reveal that seven out of the eight LLMs included in this study generated conversations riddled with CHAST, characterized by malign views expressed in seemingly neutral language unlikely to be detected by existing methods. Notably, these LLMs manifested more extreme views and opinions when dealing with non-Western concepts like caste, compared to Western ones such as race.