GeniL: A Multilingual Dataset on Generalizing Language

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Davani, Aida Mostafazadeh, Gubbi, Sagar, Dev, Sunipa, Dave, Shachi, Prabhakaran, Vinodkumar
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Davani, Aida Mostafazadeh
Gubbi, Sagar
Dev, Sunipa
Dave, Shachi
Prabhakaran, Vinodkumar
author_facet Davani, Aida Mostafazadeh
Gubbi, Sagar
Dev, Sunipa
Dave, Shachi
Prabhakaran, Vinodkumar
contents Generative language models are transforming our digital ecosystem, but they often inherit societal biases, for instance stereotypes associating certain attributes with specific identity groups. While whether and how these biases are mitigated may depend on the specific use cases, being able to effectively detect instances of stereotype perpetuation is a crucial first step. Current methods to assess presence of stereotypes in generated language rely on simple template or co-occurrence based measures, without accounting for the variety of sentential contexts they manifest in. We argue that understanding the sentential context is crucial for detecting instances of generalization. We distinguish two types of generalizations: (1) language that merely mentions the presence of a generalization ("people think the French are very rude"), and (2) language that reinforces such a generalization ("as French they must be rude"), from non-generalizing context ("My French friends think I am rude"). For meaningful stereotype evaluations, we need to reliably distinguish such instances of generalizations. We introduce the new task of detecting generalization in language, and build GeniL, a multilingual dataset of over 50K sentences from 9 languages (English, Arabic, Bengali, Spanish, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Malay, and Portuguese) annotated for instances of generalizations. We demonstrate that the likelihood of a co-occurrence being an instance of generalization is usually low, and varies across different languages, identity groups, and attributes. We build classifiers to detect generalization in language with an overall PR-AUC of 58.7, with varying degrees of performance across languages. Our research provides data and tools to enable a nuanced understanding of stereotype perpetuation, a crucial step towards more inclusive and responsible language technologies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_05866
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle GeniL: A Multilingual Dataset on Generalizing Language
Davani, Aida Mostafazadeh
Gubbi, Sagar
Dev, Sunipa
Dave, Shachi
Prabhakaran, Vinodkumar
Computation and Language
Generative language models are transforming our digital ecosystem, but they often inherit societal biases, for instance stereotypes associating certain attributes with specific identity groups. While whether and how these biases are mitigated may depend on the specific use cases, being able to effectively detect instances of stereotype perpetuation is a crucial first step. Current methods to assess presence of stereotypes in generated language rely on simple template or co-occurrence based measures, without accounting for the variety of sentential contexts they manifest in. We argue that understanding the sentential context is crucial for detecting instances of generalization. We distinguish two types of generalizations: (1) language that merely mentions the presence of a generalization ("people think the French are very rude"), and (2) language that reinforces such a generalization ("as French they must be rude"), from non-generalizing context ("My French friends think I am rude"). For meaningful stereotype evaluations, we need to reliably distinguish such instances of generalizations. We introduce the new task of detecting generalization in language, and build GeniL, a multilingual dataset of over 50K sentences from 9 languages (English, Arabic, Bengali, Spanish, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Malay, and Portuguese) annotated for instances of generalizations. We demonstrate that the likelihood of a co-occurrence being an instance of generalization is usually low, and varies across different languages, identity groups, and attributes. We build classifiers to detect generalization in language with an overall PR-AUC of 58.7, with varying degrees of performance across languages. Our research provides data and tools to enable a nuanced understanding of stereotype perpetuation, a crucial step towards more inclusive and responsible language technologies.
title GeniL: A Multilingual Dataset on Generalizing Language
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.05866