Large Language Models Are Biased Because They Are Large Language Models

2025/01/01 by Philip Resnik · 4 voices · 26 citations
Computer Science · #Computer science #Language model #Linguistics #Natural language processing #Topic Modeling

paper · doi:10.1162/coli_a_00558

published in Computational Linguistics 51(3), 885-906 (Association for Computational Linguistics)

openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26

Abstract

Abstract This position paper’s primary goal is to provoke thoughtful discussion about the relationship between bias and fundamental properties of large language models (LLMs). I do this by seeking to convince the reader that harmful biases are an inevitable consequence arising from the design of any large language model as LLMs are currently formulated. To the extent that this is true, it suggests that the problem of harmful bias cannot be properly addressed without a serious reconsideration of AI driven by LLMs, going back to the foundational assumptions underlying their design.

Citations

• AI generates covertly racist decisions about people based on their dialect

Cited by

• Sociodemographic biases in medical decision making by large language models

Discussions

• Is there a relationship between bias and fundamental properties of LLMs? While LLMs are powerful, they contain harmful biases that can emerge unpredictably in their behavior. Read more on this in this [bsky, 17 points, 0 comments]
• Philip Resnik: ‘to address LLM bias, start from the hard-core interpretation of the distributional hypothesis, where meaning is distribution, as opposed to distribution being part of what goes into th [bsky, 10 points, 0 comments]
• doi.org/10.1162/coli... [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
• An excellent (and provoking) position paper from Philip Resnik in the latest issue of Computational Linguistics! doi.org/10.1162/coli... [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

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• No LLM is Free From Bias: A Comprehensive Study of Bias Evaluation in Large Language Models