Bias in Large Language Models: Origin, Evaluation, and Mitigation
Published in Electronics, 2026
Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized natural language processing, but their susceptibility to biases poses significant challenges. This comprehensive review examines the landscape of bias in LLMs, from its origins to current mitigation strategies. We categorize biases as intrinsic and extrinsic, analyzing their manifestations in various natural language processing (NLP) tasks. The review critically assesses a range of bias evaluation methods, including data-level, model-level, and output-level approaches, providing researchers with a robust toolkit for bias detection. We further explore mitigation strategies, categorizing them into pre-model, intra-model, and post-model techniques, highlighting their effectiveness and limitations. Ethical and legal implications of biased LLMs are discussed, emphasizing potential harms in real-world applications such as healthcare and criminal justice. By synthesizing current knowledge on bias in LLMs, this review contributes to the ongoing effort to develop fair and responsible artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Our work serves as a comprehensive resource for researchers and practitioners working towards understanding, evaluating, and mitigating bias in LLMs, fostering the development of more equitable AI technologies.
Recommended citation: Guo, Y., Guo, M., Su, J., Yang, Z., Zhu, M., Li, H., Qiu, M., & Liu, S. S. (2026). Bias in large language models: Origin, evaluation, and mitigation. Electronics, 15(9), 1824. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15091824