Geopolitical biases in LLMs: what are the "good" and the "bad" countries according to contemporary language models

🤗 Upvotes: 54 | cs.CL

Authors:
Mikhail Salnikov, Dmitrii Korzh, Ivan Lazichny, Elvir Karimov, Artyom Iudin, Ivan Oseledets, Oleg Y. Rogov, Alexander Panchenko, Natalia Loukachevitch, Elena Tutubalina

Title:
Geopolitical biases in LLMs: what are the "good" and the "bad" countries according to contemporary language models

Arxiv:
http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06751v1

Abstract:
This paper evaluates geopolitical biases in LLMs with respect to various countries though an analysis of their interpretation of historical events with conflicting national perspectives (USA, UK, USSR, and China). We introduce a novel dataset with neutral event descriptions and contrasting viewpoints from different countries. Our findings show significant geopolitical biases, with models favoring specific national narratives. Additionally, simple debiasing prompts had a limited effect in reducing these biases. Experiments with manipulated participant labels reveal models' sensitivity to attribution, sometimes amplifying biases or recognizing inconsistencies, especially with swapped labels. This work highlights national narrative biases in LLMs, challenges the effectiveness of simple debiasing methods, and offers a framework and dataset for future geopolitical bias research.