Fairness in Large Language Models: A Taxonomic Survey
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Abstract (arXiv)
Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable success across various domains. However, despite their promising performance in numerous real-world applications, most of these algorithms lack fairness considerations. Consequently, they may lead to discriminatory outcomes against certain communities, particularly marginalized populations, prompting extensive study in fair LLMs. On the other hand, fairness in LLMs, in contrast to fairness in traditional machine learning, entails exclusive backgrounds, taxonomies, and fulfillment techniques. To this end, this survey presents a comprehensive overview of recent advances in the existing literature concerning fair LLMs. Specifically, a brief introduction to LLMs is provided, followed by an analysis of factors contributing to bias in LLMs. Additionally, the concept of fairness in LLMs is discussed categorically, summarizing metrics for evaluating bias in LLMs and existing algorithms for promoting fairness. Furthermore, resources for evaluating bias in LLMs, including toolkits and datasets, are summarized. Finally, existing research challenges and open questions are discussed.
Key facts. Cited by 57 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 145 of its 241 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 31 Mar 2024.
Builds on
145 of 241 references.
References · 145
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50 most cited of 145 All 145 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 13; 2025: 36; 2026: 8.
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- 2025Which of These Best Describes Multiple Choice Evaluation with LLMs? A) Forced B) Flawed C) Fixable D) All of the Abovecited by 51
- 2024Deconstructing The Ethics of Large Language Models from Long-standing Issues to New-emerging Dilemmas: A Surveycited by 23
- 2024The Impossibility of Fair LLMscited by 22
- 2025HumaniBench: A Human-Centric Framework for Large Multimodal Models Evaluationcited by 19
- 2024CEB: Compositional Evaluation Benchmark for Fairness in Large Language Modelscited by 17
- 2024FairAIED: Navigating Fairness, Bias, and Ethics in Educational AI Applicationscited by 15
- 2024Fairness Definitions in Language Models Explainedcited by 10
- 2024Fairness Testing of Large Language Models in Role-Playingcited by 10
- 2025Digital Forensics in the Age of Large Language Modelscited by 10
- 2024Beyond the Safety Bundle: Auditing the Helpful and Harmless Datasetcited by 8
- 2024Fairness in Large Language Models in Three Hourscited by 7
- 2025Building Trustworthy Multimodal AI: A Review of Fairness, Transparency, and Ethics in Vision-Language Taskscited by 7
38 more
- 2024Clinical Insights: A Comprehensive Review of Language Models in Medicinecited by 6
- 2024Improving LLM Group Fairness on Tabular Data via In-Context Learningcited by 6
- 2025Who's Asking? Investigating Bias Through the Lens of Disability Framed Queries in LLMscited by 6
- 2025Planted in Pretraining, Swayed by Finetuning: A Case Study on the Origins of Cognitive Biases in LLMscited by 5
- 2025CoBia: Constructed Conversations Can Trigger Otherwise Concealed Societal Biases in LLMscited by 5
- 2025Generative AI in Depth: A Survey of Recent Advances, Model Variants, and Real-World Applicationscited by 5
- 2025Probing LLM World Models: Enhancing Guesstimation with Wisdom of Crowds Decodingcited by 4
- 2025Efficiency vs. Alignment: Investigating Safety and Fairness Risks in Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning of LLMscited by 4
- 2024AI-Driven Healthcare: A Review on Ensuring Fairness and Mitigating Biascited by 3
- 2025Fair Text Classification via Transferable Representationscited by 3
- 2025Enhancements for Developing a Comprehensive AI Fairness Assessment Standardcited by 3
- 2025On Fairness of Task Arithmetic: The Role of Task Vectorscited by 3
- 2025AMCR: A Framework for Assessing and Mitigating Copyright Risks in Generative Modelscited by 3
- 2025Towards Transparent AI: A Survey on Explainable Language Modelscited by 3
- 2024Rolling in the deep of cognitive and AI biasescited by 2
- 2025Reproducibility Study of "Cooperate or Collapse: Emergence of Sustainable Cooperation in a Society of LLM Agents"cited by 2
- 2025Is Your Model Fairly Certain? Uncertainty-Aware Fairness Evaluation for LLMscited by 2
- 2025Understanding Gender Bias in AI-Generated Product Descriptionscited by 2
- 2025The Disparate Impacts of Speculative Decodingcited by 2
- 2026When LLMs Imagine People: A Human-Centered Persona Brainstorm Audit for Bias and Fairness in Creative Applicationscited by 2
- 2024Exploring Accuracy-Fairness Trade-off in Large Language Modelscited by 1
- 2025The LLM Wears Prada: Analysing Gender Bias and Stereotypes through Online Shopping Datacited by 1
- 2025Iterative Multilingual Spectral Attribute Erasurecited by 1
- 2025Unified Threat Detection and Mitigation Framework (UTDMF): Combating Prompt Injection, Deception, and Bias in Enterprise-Scale Transformerscited by 1
- 2025Fairness-Aware Graph Representation Learning with Limited Demographic Informationcited by 1
- 2026Structurally Human, Semantically Biased: Detecting LLM-Generated References with Embeddings and GNNscited by 1
- 2025It's complicated. The relationship of algorithmic fairness and non-discrimination provisions for high-risk systems in the EU AI Actcited by 0
- 2025The Other Side of the Coin: Exploring Fairness in Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 0
- 2025Improving Fairness in LLMs Through Testing-Time Adversariescited by 0
- 2025Fairness Evaluation of Large Language Models in Academic Library Reference Servicescited by 0
- 2025Bridging Neural Networks and Dynamic Time Warping for Adaptive Time Series Classificationcited by 0
- 2025Exploring Causal Effect of Social Bias on Faithfulness Hallucinations in Large Language Modelscited by 0
- 2025FairFLRep: Fairness aware fault localization and repair of Deep Neural Networkscited by 0
- 2025A Close Reading Approach to Gender Narrative Biases in AI-Generated Storiescited by 0
- 2025BIPOLAR: Polarization-based granular framework for LLM bias evaluationcited by 0
- 2025Integrating gender inclusivity into large language models via instruction tuningcited by 0
- 2025Controllable Pareto Trade-off between Fairness and Accuracycited by 0
- 2025Bias Testing and Mitigation in Black Box LLMs using Metamorphic Relationscited by 0
50 most cited of 57 All 57 (JSON)
- 2026FairLMs: A Turnkey Library for Fairness in Language Models18 Sep 2026
- 2026Fair on the Surface? Benchmarking Hidden-Output Fairness Gaps in LLM Recommenders8 Aug 2026
- 2026Whose fairness? Structural concentration in AI bias research6 Jul 2026
- 2026Explanation Fairness in Large Language Models: An Empirical Analysis of Disparities in How LLMs Justify Decisions Across Demographic Groups9 May 2026
- 2026Shiny Stories, Hidden Struggles: Investigating the Representation of Disability Through the Lens of LLMs2 Apr 2026
- 2026Separation-Utility Pareto Frontier: An Information-Theoretic Characterization4 Feb 2026
- 2026Structurally Human, Semantically Biased: Detecting LLM-Generated References with Embeddings and GNNs28 Jan 2026
- 2026When LLMs Imagine People: A Human-Centered Persona Brainstorm Audit for Bias and Fairness in Creative Applications19 Jan 2026
- 2025Textual Data Bias Detection and Mitigation -- An Extensible Pipeline with Experimental Evaluation11 Dec 2025
- 2025Bias Testing and Mitigation in Black Box LLMs using Metamorphic Relations29 Nov 2025
- 2025Fairness-Aware Graph Representation Learning with Limited Demographic Information17 Nov 2025
- 2025Efficiency vs. Alignment: Investigating Safety and Fairness Risks in Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning of LLMs1 Nov 2025
38 more
- 2025Generative AI in Depth: A Survey of Recent Advances, Model Variants, and Real-World Applications23 Oct 2025
- 2025CoBia: Constructed Conversations Can Trigger Otherwise Concealed Societal Biases in LLMs10 Oct 2025
- 2025Unified Threat Detection and Mitigation Framework (UTDMF): Combating Prompt Injection, Deception, and Bias in Enterprise-Scale Transformers6 Oct 2025
- 2025The Disparate Impacts of Speculative Decoding2 Oct 2025
- 2025Towards Transparent AI: A Survey on Explainable Language Models25 Sep 2025
- 2025Controllable Pareto Trade-off between Fairness and Accuracy17 Sep 2025
- 2025AMCR: A Framework for Assessing and Mitigating Copyright Risks in Generative Models31 Aug 2025
- 2025Integrating gender inclusivity into large language models via instruction tuning25 Aug 2025
- 2025Who's Asking? Investigating Bias Through the Lens of Disability Framed Queries in LLMs18 Aug 2025
- 2025BIPOLAR: Polarization-based granular framework for LLM bias evaluation14 Aug 2025
- 2025A Close Reading Approach to Gender Narrative Biases in AI-Generated Stories13 Aug 2025
- 2025FairFLRep: Fairness aware fault localization and repair of Deep Neural Networks11 Aug 2025
- 2025Exploring Causal Effect of Social Bias on Faithfulness Hallucinations in Large Language Models11 Aug 2025
- 2025Bridging Neural Networks and Dynamic Time Warping for Adaptive Time Series Classification13 Jul 2025
- 2025Planted in Pretraining, Swayed by Finetuning: A Case Study on the Origins of Cognitive Biases in LLMs9 Jul 2025
- 2025Fairness Evaluation of Large Language Models in Academic Library Reference Services6 Jul 2025
- 2025Iterative Multilingual Spectral Attribute Erasure12 Jun 2025
- 2025Understanding Gender Bias in AI-Generated Product Descriptions3 Jun 2025
- 2025On Fairness of Task Arithmetic: The Role of Task Vectors30 May 2025
- 2025Is Your Model Fairly Certain? Uncertainty-Aware Fairness Evaluation for LLMs29 May 2025
- 2025Improving Fairness in LLMs Through Testing-Time Adversaries17 May 2025
- 2025HumaniBench: A Human-Centric Framework for Large Multimodal Models Evaluation16 May 2025
- 2025Reproducibility Study of "Cooperate or Collapse: Emergence of Sustainable Cooperation in a Society of LLM Agents"14 May 2025
- 2025Building Trustworthy Multimodal AI: A Review of Fairness, Transparency, and Ethics in Vision-Language Tasks14 Apr 2025
- 2025The Other Side of the Coin: Exploring Fairness in Retrieval-Augmented Generation11 Apr 2025
- 2025Enhancements for Developing a Comprehensive AI Fairness Assessment Standard10 Apr 2025
- 2025Digital Forensics in the Age of Large Language Models3 Apr 2025
- 2025The LLM Wears Prada: Analysing Gender Bias and Stereotypes through Online Shopping Data2 Apr 2025
- 2025Fair Text Classification via Transferable Representations10 Mar 2025
- 2025Which of These Best Describes Multiple Choice Evaluation with LLMs? A) Forced B) Flawed C) Fixable D) All of the Above19 Feb 2025
- 2025Probing LLM World Models: Enhancing Guesstimation with Wisdom of Crowds Decoding28 Jan 2025
- 2025It's complicated. The relationship of algorithmic fairness and non-discrimination provisions for high-risk systems in the EU AI Act22 Jan 2025
- 2024Improving LLM Group Fairness on Tabular Data via In-Context Learning5 Dec 2024
- 2024Exploring Accuracy-Fairness Trade-off in Large Language Models21 Nov 2024
- 2024Beyond the Safety Bundle: Auditing the Helpful and Harmless Dataset12 Nov 2024
- 2024Fairness Testing of Large Language Models in Role-Playing1 Nov 2024
- 2024Clinical Insights: A Comprehensive Review of Language Models in Medicine21 Aug 2024
- 2024Fairness in Large Language Models in Three Hours2 Aug 2024
50 newest of 57 All 57 (JSON)
- 2025The Disparate Impacts of Speculative Decodingcited by 2
- 2025The Disparate Impacts of Speculative Decoding2 Oct 2025
- 2025Which of These Best Describes Multiple Choice Evaluation with LLMs? A) Forced B) Flawed C) Fixable D) All of the Abovecited by 51
- 2024Deconstructing The Ethics of Large Language Models from Long-standing Issues to New-emerging Dilemmas: A Surveycited by 23
- 2024The Impossibility of Fair LLMscited by 22
- 2024CEB: Compositional Evaluation Benchmark for Fairness in Large Language Modelscited by 17
- 2024FairAIED: Navigating Fairness, Bias, and Ethics in Educational AI Applicationscited by 15
- 2024Fairness Definitions in Language Models Explainedcited by 10
- 2024Fairness Testing of Large Language Models in Role-Playingcited by 10
- 2025Digital Forensics in the Age of Large Language Modelscited by 10
- 2024Beyond the Safety Bundle: Auditing the Helpful and Harmless Datasetcited by 8
- 2024Fairness in Large Language Models in Three Hourscited by 7
- 2024Clinical Insights: A Comprehensive Review of Language Models in Medicinecited by 6
- 2024Improving LLM Group Fairness on Tabular Data via In-Context Learningcited by 6
12 most cited of 48 All 48 (JSON)
- 2026FairLMs: A Turnkey Library for Fairness in Language Models18 Sep 2026
- 2026Fair on the Surface? Benchmarking Hidden-Output Fairness Gaps in LLM Recommenders8 Aug 2026
- 2026Whose fairness? Structural concentration in AI bias research6 Jul 2026
- 2026Explanation Fairness in Large Language Models: An Empirical Analysis of Disparities in How LLMs Justify Decisions Across Demographic Groups9 May 2026
- 2026Shiny Stories, Hidden Struggles: Investigating the Representation of Disability Through the Lens of LLMs2 Apr 2026
- 2026Separation-Utility Pareto Frontier: An Information-Theoretic Characterization4 Feb 2026
- 2026Structurally Human, Semantically Biased: Detecting LLM-Generated References with Embeddings and GNNs28 Jan 2026
- 2026When LLMs Imagine People: A Human-Centered Persona Brainstorm Audit for Bias and Fairness in Creative Applications19 Jan 2026
- 2025Textual Data Bias Detection and Mitigation -- An Extensible Pipeline with Experimental Evaluation11 Dec 2025
- 2025Bias Testing and Mitigation in Black Box LLMs using Metamorphic Relations29 Nov 2025
- 2025Fairness-Aware Graph Representation Learning with Limited Demographic Information17 Nov 2025
- 2025Efficiency vs. Alignment: Investigating Safety and Fairness Risks in Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning of LLMs1 Nov 2025
12 newest of 48 All 48 (JSON)