arXiv:2608.22490cs.CL2026-08中稿 · EMNLP

非英语用户安全对齐代价更高,存在系统性不公

Who Pays More for Safety? Measuring the Disparate Cost of Safety Alignment across Languages

论文配图:Who Pays More for Safety? Measuring the Disparate Cost of Safety Alignment across Languages
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 通过成对对比法量化安全对齐带来的性能损失
  • 非英语用户平均承担更高成本,部分语言双倍受损
  • 揭示安全对齐中的语言偏见,适合关注AI公平性的研究者

安全对齐使模型更符合人类价值观,但常导致响应效用下降。本文提出严谨评估框架,测量仅由安全对齐引发的效用损失(称作安全成本)。通过直接对比安全对齐与未对齐模型,发现非英语用户始终承受更高安全成本。识别出三种模式:多语言处于‘双重惩罚’区,既安全性弱又损失大;部分语言看似效用提升,实为安全过滤失效所致;甚至高资源语言需付出比英语更大的成本才能达到同等安全水平。这些差异源于显式拒绝和隐式质量差异,揭示当前安全对齐实践存在系统性语言不平等。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Safety alignment helps models adhere to human values, but it often reduces response utility. We ask a critical but understudied question: Does safety alignment impose the cost equally across language groups? To answer this, we introduce a rigorous protocol to measure the utility loss imposed solely by safety alignment, which we term Safety Cost. Through direct pairwise comparisons between safety-aligned models and their unaligned counterparts, we find a systematic inequity: non-English users consistently bear a higher Safety Cost than English users. We further identify three underlying patterns. First, multiple languages lie in a double-penalty zone, experiencing both weaker safety protection and larger utility loss. Second, certain languages exhibit apparent utility gains that are in fact a consequence of safety filters failing to engage. Third, even high-resource languages pay a larger Safety Cost than English to reach the same level of safety. We show that these disparities arise from both explicit refusals and implicit qualitative differences across multiple dimensions. By accurately measuring the disparate effects of safety alignment, our findings expose a systematic disparity in current safety alignment practices.

安全对齐语言公平模型评估

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