Large Language Models (LLMs) have become central to advancing automation and
decision-making across various sectors, raising significant ethical questions.
This study proposes a comprehensive comparative analysis of the most advanced
LLMs to assess their moral profiles. We subjected several state-of-the-art
models to a selection of ethical dilemmas and found that all the proprietary
ones are mostly utilitarian and all of the open-weights ones align mostly with
values-based ethics. Furthermore, when using the Moral Foundations
Questionnaire, all models we probed - except for Llama 2- displayed a strong
liberal bias. Lastly, in order to causally intervene in one of the studied
models, we propose a novel similarity-specific activation steering technique.
Using this method, we were able to reliably steer the model's moral compass to
different ethical schools. All of these results showcase that there is an
ethical dimension in already deployed LLMs, an aspect that is generally
overlooked.

该研究对最先进的大型语言模型进行了综合比较分析，评估了它们的道德特性，发现专有模型主要以功利主义为基础，而开源模型更符合价值伦理学；另外，通过道德基础问卷，除了 Llama 2 外，所有被调查模型都显示出明显的自由主义偏见；最后，为了对其中一个研究模型进行因果干预，提出了一种新颖的相似性激活引导技术。通过该方法，可以可靠地引导模型的道德观达到不同的伦理学派别。所有这些结果表明，已经部署的大型语言模型存在一个常常被忽视的道德维度。