Meta-Fair: AI-Assisted Fairness Testing of Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Romero-Arjona, Miguel, Parejo, José A., Alonso, Juan C., Sánchez, Ana B., Arrieta, Aitor, Segura, Sergio
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866917195447009280
author Romero-Arjona, Miguel
Parejo, José A.
Alonso, Juan C.
Sánchez, Ana B.
Arrieta, Aitor
Segura, Sergio
author_facet Romero-Arjona, Miguel
Parejo, José A.
Alonso, Juan C.
Sánchez, Ana B.
Arrieta, Aitor
Segura, Sergio
contents Fairness--the absence of unjustified bias--is a core principle in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, yet it remains difficult to assess and enforce. Current approaches to fairness testing in large language models (LLMs) often rely on manual evaluation, fixed templates, deterministic heuristics, and curated datasets, making them resource-intensive and difficult to scale. This work aims to lay the groundwork for a novel, automated method for testing fairness in LLMs, reducing the dependence on domain-specific resources and broadening the applicability of current approaches. Our approach, Meta-Fair, is based on two key ideas. First, we adopt metamorphic testing to uncover bias by examining how model outputs vary in response to controlled modifications of input prompts, defined by metamorphic relations (MRs). Second, we propose exploiting the potential of LLMs for both test case generation and output evaluation, leveraging their capability to generate diverse inputs and classify outputs effectively. The proposal is complemented by three open-source tools supporting LLM-driven generation, execution, and evaluation of test cases. We report the findings of several experiments involving 12 pre-trained LLMs, 14 MRs, 5 bias dimensions, and 7.9K automatically generated test cases. The results show that Meta-Fair is effective in uncovering bias in LLMs, achieving an average precision of 92% and revealing biased behaviour in 29% of executions. Additionally, LLMs prove to be reliable and consistent evaluators, with the best-performing models achieving F1-scores of up to 0.79. Although non-determinism affects consistency, these effects can be mitigated through careful MR design. While challenges remain to ensure broader applicability, the results indicate a promising path towards an unprecedented level of automation in LLM testing.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_02533
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Meta-Fair: AI-Assisted Fairness Testing of Large Language Models
Romero-Arjona, Miguel
Parejo, José A.
Alonso, Juan C.
Sánchez, Ana B.
Arrieta, Aitor
Segura, Sergio
Software Engineering
Fairness--the absence of unjustified bias--is a core principle in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, yet it remains difficult to assess and enforce. Current approaches to fairness testing in large language models (LLMs) often rely on manual evaluation, fixed templates, deterministic heuristics, and curated datasets, making them resource-intensive and difficult to scale. This work aims to lay the groundwork for a novel, automated method for testing fairness in LLMs, reducing the dependence on domain-specific resources and broadening the applicability of current approaches. Our approach, Meta-Fair, is based on two key ideas. First, we adopt metamorphic testing to uncover bias by examining how model outputs vary in response to controlled modifications of input prompts, defined by metamorphic relations (MRs). Second, we propose exploiting the potential of LLMs for both test case generation and output evaluation, leveraging their capability to generate diverse inputs and classify outputs effectively. The proposal is complemented by three open-source tools supporting LLM-driven generation, execution, and evaluation of test cases. We report the findings of several experiments involving 12 pre-trained LLMs, 14 MRs, 5 bias dimensions, and 7.9K automatically generated test cases. The results show that Meta-Fair is effective in uncovering bias in LLMs, achieving an average precision of 92% and revealing biased behaviour in 29% of executions. Additionally, LLMs prove to be reliable and consistent evaluators, with the best-performing models achieving F1-scores of up to 0.79. Although non-determinism affects consistency, these effects can be mitigated through careful MR design. While challenges remain to ensure broader applicability, the results indicate a promising path towards an unprecedented level of automation in LLM testing.
title Meta-Fair: AI-Assisted Fairness Testing of Large Language Models
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02533