大模型判断城市安全时,更受地名影响而非真实犯罪数据。
Is Your Neighborhood Safe? Place-based Stigma in Large Language Models' Urban Safety Judgments

- 用坐标、地名、两者结合三种方式测试模型安全判断
- 地名显著降低少数族裔聚居区的安全评分,与犯罪率无关
- 模型越懂地理,越容易将人口特征投射到地名上
大型语言模型被广泛用于城市安全决策,如步行、租房或旅行建议。我们探究这些判断是基于真实风险,还是受社区名称所关联的刻板印象影响。在洛杉矶和芝加哥的186个社区中,通过坐标仅、地名仅、地名+坐标三种条件,测试七个指令微调模型,并结合暴力犯罪与美国社区调查数据。结果显示:六种模型在仅给坐标时评分几乎不变,而地名主导了社区间差异,且与暴力犯罪有一定相关性;只有在前沿规模下,坐标通道才显示出明显变化。地名对少数族裔占比较高社区(芝加哥黑人占比、洛杉矶拉丁裔占比)的安全评分压低更严重,该效应在所有七种模型及两座城市中一致。在洛杉矶,即使控制犯罪率与收入,该效应仍存在,且在犯罪匹配对中得到验证。执法弹性分析显示,过度谨慎对应的是近乎完全报告的谋杀案,而非可变的执法行为。模型对真实地理的认知能力越强,其对地名施加的人口刻板印象越深。由于地名同时包含真实犯罪信号与社会偏见,去除地名虽降低偏见,也损失部分准确性。本文讨论了在建议与决策支持系统中部署大模型的深远影响。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Large language models are increasingly used to inform safety decisions in cities, such as where it is safe to walk, rent, or travel. We ask whether such judgments track measured risk or the patterns attached to an urban neighborhood's name. We probe seven instruct-tuned models under three conditions that dissociate name from geography: coordinates-only, name-only, and name+coordinates, across 186 neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Chicago, joined to violent crime and American Community Survey data. First, ratings are nearly flat under coordinates for six of seven models, while names carry most between neighborhood variation and are moderately calibrated to violent crime; only at frontier scale does the coordinate channel show appreciable variation. Second, names lower safety ratings more for neighborhoods with higher shares of the locally dominant marginalized group (percent Black in Chicago, percent Hispanic in Los Angeles), and this name effect tracks demographic share in all seven models and both cities. In Los Angeles, where demographic share and crime are more separable, the effect survives controls for crime and income and is confirmed by crime-matched pairs. An enforcement-elasticity analysis further shows that over-caution tracks near-fully-reported homicide rather than discretionary, deployment-driven offenses. Third, the effect scales with geographic knowledge: models that better distinguish real neighborhoods apply more demographic stereotype to them. Because neighborhood names carry both genuine crime signal and demographic stereotype, removing names reduces both bias and accuracy. We discuss implications for deploying LLMs in advice and decision-support settings.
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