Definition
The systematic and repeatable skew in RAG pipeline outputs or Agent decision-making caused by imbalances in vector embeddings, training data, or LLM-internal preferences for specific document positions (e.g., primacy/recency bias). It often forces an architectural trade-off where increasing fairness through diverse re-ranking or de-biasing algorithms may increase total inference latency and computational overhead.
Distinguish from 'Hallucination' (random fabrication); bias is a consistent, non-random preference for specific viewpoints, sources, or data positions.
"A Weighted Die: No matter how many times you roll (query), the internal structural imbalance ensures certain outcomes (data points) appear more frequently than others."
Conceptual Overview
The systematic and repeatable skew in RAG pipeline outputs or Agent decision-making caused by imbalances in vector embeddings, training data, or LLM-internal preferences for specific document positions (e.g., primacy/recency bias). It often forces an architectural trade-off where increasing fairness through diverse re-ranking or de-biasing algorithms may increase total inference latency and computational overhead.
Disambiguation
Distinguish from 'Hallucination' (random fabrication); bias is a consistent, non-random preference for specific viewpoints, sources, or data positions.
Visual Analog
A Weighted Die: No matter how many times you roll (query), the internal structural imbalance ensures certain outcomes (data points) appear more frequently than others.