# Desert Camels and Oil Sheikhs: Arab-Centric Red Teaming of Frontier LLMs

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.24049 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.24049/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Safety alignment, refusal and guardrails, one of 12 directions in LLM safety and security.
- Builds on 25 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Oct 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM safety and security / [Safety alignment, refusal and guardrails](https://mlsanity.com/safety/safety-alignment-refusal-and-guardrails/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18290/) (2023)
- [Unsupervised Cross-lingual Representation Learning at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02116/) (2019)
- [Universal and Transferable Adversarial Attacks on Aligned Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15043/) (2023)
- [Jailbroken: How Does LLM Safety Training Fail?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02483/) (2023)
- [Scaling Language Models: Methods, Analysis & Insights from Training Gopher](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11446/) (2021)
- [Red Teaming Language Models with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03286/) (2022)
- [AraBERT: Transformer-based Model for Arabic Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00104/) (2020)
- [Low-Resource Languages Jailbreak GPT-4](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02446/) (2023)
- [Bias Runs Deep: Implicit Reasoning Biases in Persona-Assigned LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04892/) (2023)
- [MasterKey: Automated Jailbreak Across Multiple Large Language Model Chatbots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08715/) (2023)
- [ARBERT & MARBERT: Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Arabic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01785/) (2020)
- [Having Beer after Prayer? Measuring Cultural Bias in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14456/) (2023)
- [The Butterfly Effect of Altering Prompts: How Small Changes and Jailbreaks Affect Large Language Model Performance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03729/) (2024)
- [JailbreakRadar: Comprehensive Assessment of Jailbreak Attacks Against LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05668/) (2024)
- [Improved Few-Shot Jailbreaking Can Circumvent Aligned Language Models and Their Defenses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01288/) (2024)
- [Jais and Jais-chat: Arabic-Centric Foundation and Instruction-Tuned Open Generative Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16149/) (2023)
- [Investigating Subtler Biases in LLMs: Ageism, Beauty, Institutional, and Nationality Bias in Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.08902/) (2023)
- [NBIAS: A Natural Language Processing Framework for Bias Identification in Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01681/) (2023)
- [Quite Good, but Not Enough: Nationality Bias in Large Language Models -- A Case Study of ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06996/) (2024)
- [Large Language Models are biased to overestimate profoundness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14422/) (2023)
- [Low-Resource Cross-Lingual Adaptive Training for Nigerian Pidgin](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00382/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Surfacing Subtle Stereotypes: A Multilingual, Debate-Oriented Evaluation of Modern LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01187/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) are widely used but raise ethical concerns due to embedded social biases. This study examines LLM biases against Arabs versus Westerners across eight domains, including women's rights, terrorism, and anti-Semitism and assesses model resistance to perpetuating these biases. To this end, we create two datasets: one to evaluate LLM bias toward Arabs versus Westerners and another to test model safety against prompts that exaggerate negative traits ("jailbreaks"). We evaluate six LLMs -- GPT-4, GPT-4o, LlaMA 3.1 (8B & 405B), Mistral 7B, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet. We find 79% of cases displaying negative biases toward Arabs, with LlaMA 3.1-405B being the most biased. Our jailbreak tests reveal GPT-4o as the most vulnerable, despite being an optimized version, followed by LlaMA 3.1-8B and Mistral 7B. All LLMs except Claude exhibit attack success rates above 87% in three categories. We also find Claude 3.5 Sonnet the safest, but it still displays biases in seven of eight categories. Despite being an optimized version of GPT4, We find GPT-4o to be more prone to biases and jailbreaks, suggesting optimization flaws. Our findings underscore the pressing need for more robust bias mitigation strategies and strengthened security measures in LLMs.