Do Large Language Models Rank Fairly? An Empirical Study on the Fairness of LLMs as Rankers

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Main Authors: Wang, Yuan, Wu, Xuyang, Wu, Hsin-Tai, Tao, Zhiqiang, Fang, Yi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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_version_ 1866916301059915776
author Wang, Yuan
Wu, Xuyang
Wu, Hsin-Tai
Tao, Zhiqiang
Fang, Yi
author_facet Wang, Yuan
Wu, Xuyang
Wu, Hsin-Tai
Tao, Zhiqiang
Fang, Yi
contents The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) in information retrieval has raised a critical reevaluation of fairness in the text-ranking models. LLMs, such as GPT models and Llama2, have shown effectiveness in natural language understanding tasks, and prior works (e.g., RankGPT) have also demonstrated that the LLMs exhibit better performance than the traditional ranking models in the ranking task. However, their fairness remains largely unexplored. This paper presents an empirical study evaluating these LLMs using the TREC Fair Ranking dataset, focusing on the representation of binary protected attributes such as gender and geographic location, which are historically underrepresented in search outcomes. Our analysis delves into how these LLMs handle queries and documents related to these attributes, aiming to uncover biases in their ranking algorithms. We assess fairness from both user and content perspectives, contributing an empirical benchmark for evaluating LLMs as the fair ranker.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_03192
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Do Large Language Models Rank Fairly? An Empirical Study on the Fairness of LLMs as Rankers
Wang, Yuan
Wu, Xuyang
Wu, Hsin-Tai
Tao, Zhiqiang
Fang, Yi
Information Retrieval
Computation and Language
The integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) in information retrieval has raised a critical reevaluation of fairness in the text-ranking models. LLMs, such as GPT models and Llama2, have shown effectiveness in natural language understanding tasks, and prior works (e.g., RankGPT) have also demonstrated that the LLMs exhibit better performance than the traditional ranking models in the ranking task. However, their fairness remains largely unexplored. This paper presents an empirical study evaluating these LLMs using the TREC Fair Ranking dataset, focusing on the representation of binary protected attributes such as gender and geographic location, which are historically underrepresented in search outcomes. Our analysis delves into how these LLMs handle queries and documents related to these attributes, aiming to uncover biases in their ranking algorithms. We assess fairness from both user and content perspectives, contributing an empirical benchmark for evaluating LLMs as the fair ranker.
title Do Large Language Models Rank Fairly? An Empirical Study on the Fairness of LLMs as Rankers
topic Information Retrieval
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.03192