On the Inevitability of Left-Leaning Political Bias in Aligned Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Autor principal: Hagendorff, Thilo
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Hagendorff, Thilo
author_facet Hagendorff, Thilo
contents The guiding principle of AI alignment is to train large language models (LLMs) to be harmless, helpful, and honest (HHH). At the same time, there are mounting concerns that LLMs exhibit a left-wing political bias. Yet, the commitment to AI alignment cannot be harmonized with the latter critique. In this article, I argue that intelligent systems that are trained to be harmless and honest must necessarily exhibit left-wing political bias. Normative assumptions underlying alignment objectives inherently concur with progressive moral frameworks and left-wing principles, emphasizing harm avoidance, inclusivity, fairness, and empirical truthfulness. Conversely, right-wing ideologies often conflict with alignment guidelines. Yet, research on political bias in LLMs is consistently framing its insights about left-leaning tendencies as a risk, as problematic, or concerning. This way, researchers are actively arguing against AI alignment, tacitly fostering the violation of HHH principles.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_15328
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publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Inevitability of Left-Leaning Political Bias in Aligned Language Models
Hagendorff, Thilo
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
The guiding principle of AI alignment is to train large language models (LLMs) to be harmless, helpful, and honest (HHH). At the same time, there are mounting concerns that LLMs exhibit a left-wing political bias. Yet, the commitment to AI alignment cannot be harmonized with the latter critique. In this article, I argue that intelligent systems that are trained to be harmless and honest must necessarily exhibit left-wing political bias. Normative assumptions underlying alignment objectives inherently concur with progressive moral frameworks and left-wing principles, emphasizing harm avoidance, inclusivity, fairness, and empirical truthfulness. Conversely, right-wing ideologies often conflict with alignment guidelines. Yet, research on political bias in LLMs is consistently framing its insights about left-leaning tendencies as a risk, as problematic, or concerning. This way, researchers are actively arguing against AI alignment, tacitly fostering the violation of HHH principles.
title On the Inevitability of Left-Leaning Political Bias in Aligned Language Models
topic Computation and Language
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15328