Never Tell an AI You’re From Naples
For Algorithm Watch, Nicolas Kayser-Bril prompted four open-weight large language models to reveal their biases about European cities. The analysis reveals clear and consistent geographic stereotypes.
Of course, no one is likely to prompt a second-tier LLM to produce a ranking of Europe’s “most intelligent” cities. Yet such systems are almost certainly being deployed by companies and public administrations to rank CVs or evaluate grant proposals. Because “Stockholm” is much more strongly associated with intelligence than “Naples”, tangible real-word effects are plausible – even if they are difficult to quantify.