Position: LLMs Must Use Functor-Based and RAG-Driven Bias Mitigation for Fairness
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Abstract (arXiv)
Biases in large language models (LLMs) often manifest as systematic distortions in associations between demographic attributes and professional or social roles, reinforcing harmful stereotypes across gender, ethnicity, and geography. This position paper advocates for addressing demographic and gender biases in LLMs through a dual-pronged methodology, integrating category-theoretic transformations and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). Category theory provides a rigorous, structure-preserving mathematical framework that maps biased semantic domains to unbiased canonical forms via functors, ensuring bias elimination while preserving semantic integrity. Complementing this, RAG dynamically injects diverse, up-to-date external knowledge during inference, directly countering ingrained biases within model parameters. By combining structural debiasing through functor-based mappings and contextual grounding via RAG, we outline a comprehensive framework capable of delivering equitable and fair model outputs. Our synthesis of the current literature validates the efficacy of each approach individually, while addressing potential critiques demonstrates the robustness of this integrated strategy. Ensuring fairness in LLMs, therefore, demands both the mathematical rigor of category-theoretic transformations and the adaptability of retrieval augmentation.
Key facts. Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 69 of its 104 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Mar 2026.
Builds on
69 of 104 references.
References · 69
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50 most cited of 69 All 69 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 8.
8 papers.
- 2026VLA-Forget: Vision-Language-Action Unlearning for Embodied Foundation Modelscited by 9
- 2026CatRAG: Functor-Guided Structural Debiasing with Retrieval Augmentation for Fair LLMscited by 6
- 2026G-Drift MIA: Membership Inference via Gradient-Induced Feature Drift in LLMscited by 6
- 2026SafeCommit: Certifying When Memory-Grounded Agents May Safely Actcited by 4
- 2026RAZOR: Ratio-Aware Layer Editing for Targeted Unlearning in Vision Transformers and Diffusion Modelscited by 3
- 2026PERSA: Reinforcement Learning for Professor-Style Personalized Feedback with LLMscited by 3
- 2026Listening with Attention: Entropy-Guided Explainability for Transformer-Based Audio Modelscited by 2
- 2026Forgetting Only What Matters: Layer-Selective Unlearning toward Robust LLMscited by 0
- 2026Forgetting Only What Matters: Layer-Selective Unlearning toward Robust LLMs9 Sep 2026
- 2026SafeCommit: Certifying When Memory-Grounded Agents May Safely Act4 Aug 2026
- 2026Listening with Attention: Entropy-Guided Explainability for Transformer-Based Audio Models12 Jun 2026
- 2026PERSA: Reinforcement Learning for Professor-Style Personalized Feedback with LLMs1 May 2026
- 2026VLA-Forget: Vision-Language-Action Unlearning for Embodied Foundation Models5 Apr 2026
- 2026G-Drift MIA: Membership Inference via Gradient-Induced Feature Drift in LLMs1 Apr 2026
- 2026CatRAG: Functor-Guided Structural Debiasing with Retrieval Augmentation for Fair LLMs23 Mar 2026
- 2026RAZOR: Ratio-Aware Layer Editing for Targeted Unlearning in Vision Transformers and Diffusion Models16 Mar 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026Evaluating Social Bias in RAG Systems: When External Context Helps and Reasoning Hurts
- 2024With a Grain of SALT: Are LLMs Fair Across Social Dimensions?
- 2023Confronting LLMs with Traditional ML: Rethinking the Fairness of Large Language Models in Tabular Classifications
- 2025Robustly Improving LLM Fairness in Realistic Settings via Interpretability
- 2026Intra-Fairness Dynamics: The Bias Spillover Effect in Targeted LLM Alignment
- 2024A Multi-LLM Debiasing Framework
- 2026DebiasRAG: A Tuning-Free Path to Fair Generation in Large Language Models through Retrieval-Augmented Generation
- 2025Mitigating Bias in RAG: Controlling the Embedder