📝 SummarXiv

Abstract

As large language models (LLMs) become increasingly embedded in products used by millions, their outputs may influence individual beliefs and, cumulatively, shape public opinion. If the behavior of LLMs can be intentionally steered toward specific ideological positions, such as political or religious views, then those who control these systems could gain disproportionate influence over public discourse. Although it remains an open question whether LLMs can reliably be guided toward coherent ideological stances and whether such steering can be effectively prevented, a crucial first step is to develop methods for detecting when such steering attempts occur. In this work, we adapt a previously proposed statistical method to the new context of ideological bias auditing. Our approach carries over the model-agnostic design of the original framework, which does not require access to the internals of the language model. Instead, it identifies potential ideological steering by analyzing distributional shifts in model outputs across prompts that are thematically related to a chosen topic. This design makes the method particularly suitable for auditing proprietary black-box systems. We validate our approach through a series of experiments, demonstrating its practical applicability and its potential to support independent post hoc audits of LLM behavior.