Selecting Shots for Demographic Fairness in Few-Shot Learning with Large Language Models

Carlos Alejandro Aguirre, Kuleen Sasse, Isabel Alyssa Cachola, Mark Dredze


Abstract
Recently, work in NLP has shifted to few-shot (in-context) learning, with large language models (LLMs) performing well across a range of tasks. However, while fairness evaluations have become a standard for supervised methods, little is known about the fairness of LLMs as prediction systems. Further, common standard methods for fairness involve access to model weights or are applied during finetuning, which are not applicable in few-shot learning. Do LLMs exhibit prediction biases when used for standard NLP tasks?In this work, we analyze the effect of shots, which directly affect the performance of models, on the fairness of LLMs as NLP classification systems. We consider how different shot selection strategies, both existing and new demographically sensitive methods, affect model fairness across three standard fairness datasets. We find that overall the performance of LLMs is not indicative of their fairness, and there is not a single method that fits all scenarios. In light of these facts, we discuss how future work can include LLM fairness in evaluations.
Anthology ID:
2024.nlp4pi-1.4
Volume:
Proceedings of the Third Workshop on NLP for Positive Impact
Month:
November
Year:
2024
Address:
Miami, Florida, USA
Editors:
Daryna Dementieva, Oana Ignat, Zhijing Jin, Rada Mihalcea, Giorgio Piatti, Joel Tetreault, Steven Wilson, Jieyu Zhao
Venue:
NLP4PI
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
50–67
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.nlp4pi-1.4
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Carlos Alejandro Aguirre, Kuleen Sasse, Isabel Alyssa Cachola, and Mark Dredze. 2024. Selecting Shots for Demographic Fairness in Few-Shot Learning with Large Language Models. In Proceedings of the Third Workshop on NLP for Positive Impact, pages 50–67, Miami, Florida, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Selecting Shots for Demographic Fairness in Few-Shot Learning with Large Language Models (Aguirre et al., NLP4PI 2024)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.nlp4pi-1.4.pdf