Can Large Language Models Differentiate Harmful from Argumentative Essays? Steps Toward Ethical Essay Scoring
Hongjin Kim, Jeonghyun Kang, Harksoo Kim
Abstract
This study addresses critical gaps in Automatic Essay Scoring (AES) systems and Large Language Models (LLMs) with regard to their ability to effectively identify and score harmful essays. Despite advancements in AES technology, current models often overlook ethically and morally problematic elements within essays, erroneously assigning high scores to essays that may propagate harmful opinions. In this study, we introduce the Harmful Essay Detection (HED) benchmark, which includes essays integrating sensitive topics such as racism and gender bias, to test the efficacy of various LLMs in recognizing and scoring harmful content. Our findings reveal that: (1) LLMs require further enhancement to accurately distinguish between harmful and argumentative essays, and (2) both current AES models and LLMs fail to consider the ethical dimensions of content during scoring. The study underscores the need for developing more robust AES systems that are sensitive to the ethical implications of the content they are scoring.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{kim-etal-2025-large,
title = "Can Large Language Models Differentiate Harmful from Argumentative Essays? Steps Toward Ethical Essay Scoring",
author = "Kim, Hongjin and
Kang, Jeonghyun and
Kim, Harksoo",
editor = "Rambow, Owen and
Wanner, Leo and
Apidianaki, Marianna and
Al-Khalifa, Hend and
Eugenio, Barbara Di and
Schockaert, Steven",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics",
month = jan,
year = "2025",
address = "Abu Dhabi, UAE",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.coling-main.541/",
pages = "8121--8147"
}