Middle East AI

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Mar 9 – Mar 15, 2026

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SectEval: Evaluating the Latent Sectarian Preferences of Large Language Models

arXiv · · NLP LLM

The paper introduces SectEval, a new benchmark to evaluate sectarian biases in LLMs concerning Sunni and Shia Islam, available in English and Hindi. Results show significant inconsistencies in LLM responses based on language, with some models favoring Shia responses in English but Sunni in Hindi. Location-based experiments further reveal that advanced models adapt their responses based on the user's claimed country, while smaller models exhibit a consistent Sunni-leaning bias.