Madeline Bossi

Eve Fleisig, Genevieve Smith, Madeline Bossi et al.

We present a large-scale study of linguistic bias exhibited by ChatGPT covering ten dialects of English (Standard American English, Standard British English, and eight widely spoken non-"standard" varieties from around the world). We prompted GPT-3.5 Turbo and GPT-4 with text by native speakers of each variety and analyzed the responses via detailed linguistic feature annotation and native speaker evaluation. We find that the models default to "standard" varieties of English; based on evaluation by native speakers, we also find that model responses to non-"standard" varieties consistently exhibit a range of issues: stereotyping (19% worse than for "standard" varieties), demeaning content (25% worse), lack of comprehension (9% worse), and condescending responses (15% worse). We also find that if these models are asked to imitate the writing style of prompts in non-"standard" varieties, they produce text that exhibits lower comprehension of the input and is especially prone to stereotyping. GPT-4 improves on GPT-3.5 in terms of comprehension, warmth, and friendliness, but also exhibits a marked increase in stereotyping (+18%). The results indicate that GPT-3.5 Turbo and GPT-4 can perpetuate linguistic discrimination toward speakers of non-"standard" varieties.

Genevieve Smith, Eve Fleisig, Madeline Bossi et al.

Standard language ideology is reflected and reinforced in language generated by large language models (LLMs). We present a faceted taxonomy of open problems that illustrate how standard language ideology manifests in AI-generated language, alongside implications for minoritized language communities and society more broadly. We introduce the concept of standard AI-generated language ideology, a process through which LLMs position "standard" languages--particularly Standard American English (SAE)--as the linguistic default, reinforcing the perception that SAE is the most "appropriate" language. We then discuss ongoing tensions around what constitutes desirable system behavior, as well as advantages and drawbacks of generative AI tools attempting, or refusing, to imitate different English language varieties. Rather than prescribing narrow technical fixes, we offer three recommendations for researchers, practitioners, and funders that focus on shifting structural conditions and supporting more emancipatory outcomes for diverse language communities.