How Well Do LLMs Represent Values Across Cultures? Empirical Analysis of LLM Responses Based on Hofstede Cultural Dimensions

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Kharchenko, Julia, Roosta, Tanya, Chadha, Aman, Shah, Chirag
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Kharchenko, Julia
Roosta, Tanya
Chadha, Aman
Shah, Chirag
author_facet Kharchenko, Julia
Roosta, Tanya
Chadha, Aman
Shah, Chirag
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) attempt to imitate human behavior by responding to humans in a way that pleases them, including by adhering to their values. However, humans come from diverse cultures with different values. It is critical to understand whether LLMs showcase different values to the user based on the stereotypical values of a user's known country. We prompt different LLMs with a series of advice requests based on 5 Hofstede Cultural Dimensions -- a quantifiable way of representing the values of a country. Throughout each prompt, we incorporate personas representing 36 different countries and, separately, languages predominantly tied to each country to analyze the consistency in the LLMs' cultural understanding. Through our analysis of the responses, we found that LLMs can differentiate between one side of a value and another, as well as understand that countries have differing values, but will not always uphold the values when giving advice, and fail to understand the need to answer differently based on different cultural values. Rooted in these findings, we present recommendations for training value-aligned and culturally sensitive LLMs. More importantly, the methodology and the framework developed here can help further understand and mitigate culture and language alignment issues with LLMs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_14805
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle How Well Do LLMs Represent Values Across Cultures? Empirical Analysis of LLM Responses Based on Hofstede Cultural Dimensions
Kharchenko, Julia
Roosta, Tanya
Chadha, Aman
Shah, Chirag
Computation and Language
Large Language Models (LLMs) attempt to imitate human behavior by responding to humans in a way that pleases them, including by adhering to their values. However, humans come from diverse cultures with different values. It is critical to understand whether LLMs showcase different values to the user based on the stereotypical values of a user's known country. We prompt different LLMs with a series of advice requests based on 5 Hofstede Cultural Dimensions -- a quantifiable way of representing the values of a country. Throughout each prompt, we incorporate personas representing 36 different countries and, separately, languages predominantly tied to each country to analyze the consistency in the LLMs' cultural understanding. Through our analysis of the responses, we found that LLMs can differentiate between one side of a value and another, as well as understand that countries have differing values, but will not always uphold the values when giving advice, and fail to understand the need to answer differently based on different cultural values. Rooted in these findings, we present recommendations for training value-aligned and culturally sensitive LLMs. More importantly, the methodology and the framework developed here can help further understand and mitigate culture and language alignment issues with LLMs.
title How Well Do LLMs Represent Values Across Cultures? Empirical Analysis of LLM Responses Based on Hofstede Cultural Dimensions
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.14805