mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Fairness Evaluation and Inference Level Mitigation in LLMs

arXiv 2510.18914 ↗First posted 21 Oct 2025cs.CL cs.AIcited by 2

On the map: LLM safety and security → Safety alignment, refusal and guardrails

Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models often display undesirable behaviors embedded in their internal representations, undermining fairness, inconsistency drift, amplification of harmful content, and the propagation of unwanted patterns during extended dialogue and conversations. Although training-time or data-centric methods attempt to reduce these effects, they are computationally expensive, irreversible once deployed, and slow to adapt to new conversational contexts. Pruning-based methods provide a flexible and transparent way to reduce bias by adjusting the neurons responsible for certain behaviors. However, most existing approaches are static; once a neuron is removed, the model loses the ability to adapt when the conversation or context changes. To address this, we propose a dynamic, reversible, pruning-based framework that detects context-aware neuron activations and applies adaptive masking to modulate their influence during generation. Our inference-time solution provides fine-grained, memory-aware mitigation with knowledge-preserved, more coherent behavior across multilingual single- and multi-turn dialogues, enabling dynamic fairness control in real-world conversational AI.

Key facts. Cited by 2 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 29 of its 53 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 21 Oct 2025.

Builds on

29 of 53 references.

References · 29

  1. 2017On Calibration of Modern Neural Networkscited by 4,960
  2. 2020Transformer Feed-Forward Layers Are Key-Value Memoriescited by 1,336
  3. 2021Probing Classifiers: Promises, Shortcomings, and Advancescited by 876
  4. 2022Discovering Language Model Behaviors with Model-Written Evaluationscited by 836
  5. 2021BBQ: A Hand-Built Bias Benchmark for Question Answeringcited by 701
  6. 2020Movement Pruning: Adaptive Sparsity by Fine-Tuningcited by 403
  7. 2021Self-Diagnosis and Self-Debiasing: A Proposal for Reducing Corpus-Based Bias in NLPcited by 337
  8. 2019Mitigating Gender Bias in Natural Language Processing: Literature Reviewcited by 287
  9. 2024A Survey on Recent Advances in LLM-Based Multi-turn Dialogue Systemscited by 170
  10. 2023Mitigating Label Biases for In-context Learningcited by 89
  11. 2019Analyzing Polarization in Social Media: Method and Application to Tweets on 21 Mass Shootingscited by 67
  12. 2021Conditional probing: measuring usable information beyond a baselinecited by 62
17 more
  1. 2023UP5: Unbiased Foundation Model for Fairness-aware Recommendationcited by 38
  2. 2024FairMT-Bench: Benchmarking Fairness for Multi-turn Dialogue in Conversational LLMscited by 36
  3. 2025Investigating Non-Transitivity in LLM-as-a-Judgecited by 34
  4. 2020Pruning Redundant Mappings in Transformer Models via Spectral-Normalized Identity Priorcited by 23
  5. 2023Mitigating Biases for Instruction-following Language Models via Bias Neurons Eliminationcited by 23
  6. 2024Fairness and Bias in Multimodal AI: A Surveycited by 20
  7. 2025Shifting Perspectives: Steering Vectors for Robust Bias Mitigation in LLMscited by 14
  8. 2024Bias Vector: Mitigating Biases in Language Models with Task Arithmetic Approachcited by 12
  9. 2024What Matters in Memorizing and Recalling Facts? Multifaceted Benchmarks for Knowledge Probing in Language Modelscited by 9
  10. 2022Task-specific Compression for Multi-task Language Models using Attribution-based Pruningcited by 7
  11. 2025Steering Towards Fairness: Mitigating Political Bias in LLMscited by 7
  12. 2024Maxwell's Demon at Work: Efficient Pruning by Leveraging Saturation of Neuronscited by 6
  13. 2025LangFair: A Python Package for Assessing Bias and Fairness in Large Language Model Use Casescited by 5
  14. 2025Framing Political Bias in Multilingual LLMs Across Pakistani Languagescited by 5
  15. 2025AdvSumm: Adversarial Training for Bias Mitigation in Text Summarizationcited by 2
  16. 2025No Training Wheels: Steering Vectors for Bias Correction at Inference Timecited by 2
  17. 2025BiMi Sheets: Infosheets for bias mitigation methodscited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Batch-wise Adaptive Pruning: Periodic Neuron Activation-Aware Weight Pruning for Language Reasoning Model
  2. 2024Mitigating Copy Bias in In-Context Learning through Neuron Pruning
  3. 2026LLMs can Compress LLMs: Adaptive Pruning by Agents
  4. 2023Learning from Red Teaming: Gender Bias Provocation and Mitigation in Large Language Models
  5. 2024Exploring and Controlling Diversity in LLM-Agent Conversation
  6. 2025Reasoning Towards Fairness: Mitigating Bias in Language Models through Reasoning-Guided Fine-Tuning
  7. 2025Silenced Biases: The Dark Side LLMs Learned to Refuse
  8. 2026SafeCtrl-RL: Inference-Time Adaptive Behaviour Control for LLM Dialogue via RL-Driven Prompt Optimisation