Bias in Large Language Models: Origin, Evaluation, and Mitigation
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Abstract (arXiv)
Large Language Models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing, but their susceptibility to biases poses significant challenges. This comprehensive review examines the landscape of bias in LLMs, from its origins to current mitigation strategies. We categorize biases as intrinsic and extrinsic, analyzing their manifestations in various NLP tasks. The review critically assesses a range of bias evaluation methods, including data-level, model-level, and output-level approaches, providing researchers with a robust toolkit for bias detection. We further explore mitigation strategies, categorizing them into pre-model, intra-model, and post-model techniques, highlighting their effectiveness and limitations. Ethical and legal implications of biased LLMs are discussed, emphasizing potential harms in real-world applications such as healthcare and criminal justice. By synthesizing current knowledge on bias in LLMs, this review contributes to the ongoing effort to develop fair and responsible AI systems. Our work serves as a comprehensive resource for researchers and practitioners working towards understanding, evaluating, and mitigating bias in LLMs, fostering the development of more equitable AI technologies.
Key facts. Cited by 77 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 105 of its 190 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Nov 2024.
Builds on
105 of 190 references.
References · 105
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- 2023Bias and Fairness in Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 639
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- 2018Gender Bias in Coreference Resolutioncited by 442
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- 2019Social Bias Frames: Reasoning about Social and Power Implications of Languagecited by 380
- 2021Persistent Anti-Muslim Bias in Large Language Modelscited by 377
- 2019Bias in Bios: A Case Study of Semantic Representation Bias in a High-Stakes Settingcited by 349
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- 2021Towards Understanding and Mitigating Social Biases in Language Modelscited by 296
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- 2019Measuring Bias in Contextualized Word Representationscited by 276
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- 2020Measuring and Reducing Gendered Correlations in Pre-trained Modelscited by 224
- 2023Evaluating the Moral Beliefs Encoded in LLMscited by 215
- 2019Identifying and Reducing Gender Bias in Word-Level Language Modelscited by 214
- 2019Gender Bias in Contextualized Word Embeddingscited by 203
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50 most cited of 105 All 105 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 1; 2025: 45; 2026: 31.
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- 2026Entropy Minimization without Model Collapse: Mitigating Prediction Bias in Medical Imaging1 Jun 2026
- 2026A Practical Upper Bound on Selection Bias Effects in Medical Prediction Models30 May 2026
- 2026Side-by-side Comparison Amplifies Dialect Bias in Language Models23 May 2026
- 2026Auditing demographic bias in AI-based emergency police dispatch: a cross-lingual evaluation of eleven large language models2 May 2026
- 2026ReLay: Personalized LLM-Generated Plain-Language Summaries for Better Understanding, but at What Cost?1 May 2026
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- 2025SynthRL: Scaling Visual Reasoning with Verifiable Data Synthesiscited by 12
- 2024Rethinking LLM Uncertainty: A Multi-Agent Approach to Estimating Black-Box Model Uncertaintycited by 11
- 2025From Surveys to Narratives: Rethinking Cultural Value Adaptation in LLMscited by 9
- 2025Diversity-Enhanced Reasoning for Subjective Questionscited by 9
- 2025Veracity Bias and Beyond: Uncovering LLMs' Hidden Beliefs in Problem-Solving Reasoningcited by 3
- 2025Analysis of LLM Bias (Chinese Propaganda & Anti-US Sentiment) in DeepSeek-R1 vs. ChatGPT o3-mini-highcited by 2
- 2025Safe for Whom? Rethinking How We Evaluate the Safety of LLMs for Real Userscited by 2
- 2026AEGIS: From Clues to Verdicts -- Graph-Guided Deep Vulnerability Reasoning via Dialectics and Meta-Auditingcited by 1
- 2026Towards general embodied intelligence: integrating large language models, knowledge bases, and reasoning capabilities to build the next generation of AI agentscited by 1
- 2026CoTEvol: Self-Evolving Chain-of-Thoughts for Data Synthesis in Mathematical Reasoningcited by 0
- 2026Towards general embodied intelligence: integrating large language models, knowledge bases, and reasoning capabilities to build the next generation of AI agents20 Aug 2026
- 2026CoTEvol: Self-Evolving Chain-of-Thoughts for Data Synthesis in Mathematical Reasoning16 Apr 2026
- 2026AEGIS: From Clues to Verdicts -- Graph-Guided Deep Vulnerability Reasoning via Dialectics and Meta-Auditing21 Mar 2026
- 2025Safe for Whom? Rethinking How We Evaluate the Safety of LLMs for Real Users11 Dec 2025
- 2025Diversity-Enhanced Reasoning for Subjective Questions27 Jul 2025
- 2025SynthRL: Scaling Visual Reasoning with Verifiable Data Synthesis2 Jun 2025
- 2025Analysis of LLM Bias (Chinese Propaganda & Anti-US Sentiment) in DeepSeek-R1 vs. ChatGPT o3-mini-high2 Jun 2025
- 2025From Surveys to Narratives: Rethinking Cultural Value Adaptation in LLMs22 May 2025
- 2025Veracity Bias and Beyond: Uncovering LLMs' Hidden Beliefs in Problem-Solving Reasoning22 May 2025
- 2024Rethinking LLM Uncertainty: A Multi-Agent Approach to Estimating Black-Box Model Uncertainty12 Dec 2024
- 2026Quantifying and Mitigating Self-Preference Bias of LLM Judgescited by 10
- 2025AMBEDKAR-A Multi-level Bias Elimination through a Decoding Approach with Knowledge Augmentation for Robust Constitutional Alignment of Language Modelscited by 2
- 2026BiasGRPO: Stabilizing Bias Mitigation in High-Variance Reward Landscapes via Group-Relative Policy Optimizationcited by 1
- 2026Mind the Gap: Pitfalls of LLM Alignment with Asian Public Opinioncited by 0
- 2026BiasGRPO: Stabilizing Bias Mitigation in High-Variance Reward Landscapes via Group-Relative Policy Optimization3 Jun 2026
- 2026Quantifying and Mitigating Self-Preference Bias of LLM Judges24 Apr 2026
- 2026Mind the Gap: Pitfalls of LLM Alignment with Asian Public Opinion6 Mar 2026
- 2025AMBEDKAR-A Multi-level Bias Elimination through a Decoding Approach with Knowledge Augmentation for Robust Constitutional Alignment of Language Models2 Sep 2025
- 2025A Study of LLMs' Preferences for Libraries and Programming Languagescited by 20
- 2025DAIQ: Auditing Demographic Attribute Inference from Question in LLMscited by 10
- 2026AutoMonitor-Bench: Evaluating the Reliability of LLM-Based Misbehavior Monitorcited by 10
- 2026Position: LLMs Must Use Functor-Based and RAG-Driven Bias Mitigation for Fairnesscited by 10
- 2025Beyond Nash Equilibrium: Bounded Rationality of LLMs and humans in Strategic Decision-makingcited by 9
- 2025FairI Tales: Evaluation of Fairness in Indian Contexts with a Focus on Bias and Stereotypescited by 9
- 2025SynthTRIPs: A Knowledge-Grounded Framework for Benchmark Query Generation for Personalized Tourism Recommenderscited by 8
- 2025Mapping Geopolitical Bias in 11 Large Language Models: A Bilingual, Dual-Framing Analysis of U.S.-China Tensionscited by 7
- 2025Do Bias Benchmarks Generalise? Evidence from Voice-based Evaluation of Gender Bias in SpeechLLMscited by 7
- 2025BiasFilter: An Inference-Time Debiasing Framework for Large Language Modelscited by 6
- 2025Attention Pruning: Automated Fairness Repair of Language Models via Surrogate Simulated Annealingcited by 5
- 2025Codifying Character Logic in Role-Playingcited by 5
12 most cited of 56 All 56 (JSON)
- 2026Alignment Plausibility: A New Standard for Assuring AI in Healthcare8 Jul 2026
- 2026Identifying Implicit Bias in LLM-based Chat AI Toward People with Intellectual Disabilities16 Jun 2026
- 2026Curation of a Cardiology Interface Terminology for Highlighting Electronic Health Records using Machine Learning6 Jun 2026
- 2026Entropy Minimization without Model Collapse: Mitigating Prediction Bias in Medical Imaging1 Jun 2026
- 2026A Practical Upper Bound on Selection Bias Effects in Medical Prediction Models30 May 2026
- 2026Side-by-side Comparison Amplifies Dialect Bias in Language Models23 May 2026
- 2026Auditing demographic bias in AI-based emergency police dispatch: a cross-lingual evaluation of eleven large language models2 May 2026
- 2026ReLay: Personalized LLM-Generated Plain-Language Summaries for Better Understanding, but at What Cost?1 May 2026
- 2026FAIR_XAI: Improving Multimodal Foundation Model Fairness via Explainability for Wellbeing Assessment26 Apr 2026
- 2026When AI reviews science: Can we trust the referee?26 Apr 2026
- 2026Counting Worlds Branching Time Semantics for post-hoc Bias Mitigation in generative AI21 Apr 2026
- 2026ImplicitBBQ: Benchmarking Implicit Bias in Large Language Models through Characteristic Based Cues2 Apr 2026
12 newest of 56 All 56 (JSON)