W. Russell Neuman

Chad Coleman, W. Russell Neuman, Manan Shah et al.

We present Six Llamas, a comparative study examining whether large language models fine-tuned on distinct religious corpora encode systematically different patterns of ethical reasoning. Six variants of Meta-Llama-3.1-8B are constructed: one unmodified control and five LoRA-adapted models trained exclusively on the sacred and theological texts of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, or Buddhism. All six models are probed with an identical battery of 17 standardized ethical prompts spanning moral dilemmas, game-theoretic scenarios, public policy questions, and moral-psychological self-assessments. To assess robustness and reproducibility, we implement a multi-temperature sampling design spanning ten temperature settings. We compute response consistency metrics, pairwise inter-model agreement rates, temperature sensitivity coefficients across four prompt domains, and run-to-run stability analyses. Findings show that LoRA-adapted models produce ethical reasoning patterns that are (a) systematically differentiated from the base model, (b) consistent with the moral logics of their training traditions, (c) structured along interpretable dimensions in moral-philosophical space, (d) core ethical positions remain stable across temperature variations for high-consensus dilemmas. The Trolley Problem achieves 100% consistency across all models and temperatures, while (e) tradition-specific divergence intensifies at higher temperatures in morally contested domains, and (f) the base model exhibits the highest overall response consistency (mean 88.3%), suggesting LoRA adaptation introduces both tradition-specific signal and increased sampling sensitivity. The study offers a proof-of-concept for the condensate comparative method using differentially trained language models as instruments for cultural and ethical analysis and identifies specific criteria for falsification and planned extensions.

W. Russell Neuman

This study seeks to uncover evidence of a latent structure in evolved human culture as it is refracted through contemporary large language models (LLMs). Drawing on parallel responses from six leading generative models to a prompt which asks directly what their training corpora reveal about human culture and behavior, we identify a robust cross-model consensus on a limited set of recurring cultural themes. The themes include narrative meaning-making, affect-first cognition, coalition psychology, status competition, threat sensitivity, and moral rationalization. Each provides grounds for further psychological and sociological inquiry. There is strong evidence of a convergence in these pattern recognition exercises as differences among models are shown to reflect varying explanatory lenses rather than substantive disagreement. We review these findings in the light of the evolving literatures of moral psychology, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and the computer science literature on large-scale language modeling. We argue that LLMs function as cultural condensates -- compressed representations of how humans describe, justify, and contest their own social lives across trillions of tokens of aggregated communication and narration.

W. Russell Neuman, Chad Coleman, Manan Shah

This study examines the ethical reasoning of six prominent generative large language models: OpenAI GPT-4o, Meta LLaMA 3.1, Perplexity, Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google Gemini, and Mistral 7B. The research explores how these models articulate and apply ethical logic, particularly in response to moral dilemmas such as the Trolley Problem, and Heinz Dilemma. Departing from traditional alignment studies, the study adopts an explainability-transparency framework, prompting models to explain their ethical reasoning. This approach is analyzed through three established ethical typologies: the consequentialist-deontological analytic, Moral Foundations Theory, and the Kohlberg Stages of Moral Development Model. Findings reveal that LLMs exhibit largely convergent ethical logic, marked by a rationalist, consequentialist emphasis, with decisions often prioritizing harm minimization and fairness. Despite similarities in pre-training and model architecture, a mixture of nuanced and significant differences in ethical reasoning emerge across models, reflecting variations in fine-tuning and post-training processes. The models consistently display erudition, caution, and self-awareness, presenting ethical reasoning akin to a graduate-level discourse in moral philosophy. In striking uniformity these systems all describe their ethical reasoning as more sophisticated than what is characteristic of typical human moral logic.

W. Russell Neuman, Chad Coleman, Ali Dasdan et al.

As generative AI models become increasingly integrated into high-stakes domains, the need for robust methods to evaluate their ethical reasoning becomes increasingly important. This paper introduces a five-dimensional audit model -- assessing Analytic Quality, Breadth of Ethical Considerations, Depth of Explanation, Consistency, and Decisiveness -- to evaluate the ethical logic of leading large language models (LLMs). Drawing on traditions from applied ethics and higher-order thinking, we present a multi-battery prompt approach, including novel ethical dilemmas, to probe the models' reasoning across diverse contexts. We benchmark seven major LLMs finding that while models generally converge on ethical decisions, they vary in explanatory rigor and moral prioritization. Chain-of-Thought prompting and reasoning-optimized models significantly enhance performance on our audit metrics. This study introduces a scalable methodology for ethical benchmarking of AI systems and highlights the potential for AI to complement human moral reasoning in complex decision-making contexts.

Chad Coleman, W. Russell Neuman, Ali Dasdan et al.

As large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in consequential decision-making contexts, systematically assessing their ethical reasoning capabilities becomes a critical imperative. This paper introduces the Priorities in Reasoning and Intrinsic Moral Evaluation (PRIME) framework--a comprehensive methodology for analyzing moral priorities across foundational ethical dimensions including consequentialist-deontological reasoning, moral foundations theory, and Kohlberg's developmental stages. We apply this framework to six leading LLMs through a dual-protocol approach combining direct questioning and response analysis to established ethical dilemmas. Our analysis reveals striking patterns of convergence: all evaluated models demonstrate strong prioritization of care/harm and fairness/cheating foundations while consistently underweighting authority, loyalty, and sanctity dimensions. Through detailed examination of confidence metrics, response reluctance patterns, and reasoning consistency, we establish that contemporary LLMs (1) produce decisive ethical judgments, (2) demonstrate notable cross-model alignment in moral decision-making, and (3) generally correspond with empirically established human moral preferences. This research contributes a scalable, extensible methodology for ethical benchmarking while highlighting both the promising capabilities and systematic limitations in current AI moral reasoning architectures--insights critical for responsible development as these systems assume increasingly significant societal roles.

W. Russell Neuman, Chad Coleman

Contemporary artificial intelligence research has been organized around two dominant ambitions: productivity, which treats AI systems as tools for accelerating work and economic output, and alignment, which focuses on ensuring that increasingly capable systems behave safely and in accordance with human values. This paper articulates and develops a third, emerging ambition: the use of large language models (LLMs) as scientific instruments for studying human behavior, culture, and moral reasoning. Trained on unprecedented volumes of human-produced text, LLMs encode large-scale regularities in how people argue, justify, narrate, and negotiate norms across social domains. We argue that these models can be understood as condensates of human symbolic behavior, compressed, generative representations that render patterns of collective discourse computationally accessible. The paper situates this third ambition within long-standing traditions of computational social science, content analysis, survey research, and comparative-historical inquiry, while clarifying the epistemic limits of treating model output as evidence. We distinguish between base models and fine-tuned systems, showing how alignment interventions can systematically reshape or obscure the cultural regularities learned during pretraining, and we identify instruct-only and modular adaptation regimes as pragmatic compromises for behavioral research. We review emerging methodological approaches including prompt-based experiments, synthetic population sampling, comparative-historical modeling, and ablation studies and show how each maps onto familiar social-scientific designs while operating at unprecedented scale.

W. Russell Neuman, Chad Coleman, Ali Dasdan et al.

Recent studies have revealed a consistent liberal orientation in the ethical and political responses generated by most commercial large language models (LLMs), yet the underlying causes and resulting implications remain unclear. This paper systematically investigates the political temperament of seven prominent LLMs - OpenAI's GPT-4o, Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4, Perplexity (Sonar Large), Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash, Meta AI's Llama 4, Mistral 7b Le Chat and High-Flyer's DeepSeek R1 -- using a multi-pronged approach that includes Moral Foundations Theory, a dozen established political ideology scales and a new index of current political controversies. We find strong and consistent prioritization of liberal-leaning values, particularly care and fairness, across most models. Further analysis attributes this trend to four overlapping factors: Liberal-leaning training corpora, reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), the dominance of liberal frameworks in academic ethical discourse and safety-driven fine-tuning practices. We also distinguish between political "bias" and legitimate epistemic differences, cautioning against conflating the two. A comparison of base and fine-tuned model pairs reveals that fine-tuning generally increases liberal lean, an effect confirmed through both self-report and empirical testing. We argue that this "liberal tilt" is not a programming error or the personal preference of programmers but an emergent property of training on democratic rights-focused discourse. Finally, we propose that LLMs may indirectly echo John Rawls' famous veil-of ignorance philosophical aspiration, reflecting a moral stance unanchored to personal identity or interest. Rather than undermining democratic discourse, this pattern may offer a new lens through which to examine collective reasoning.