
Position is Power: System Prompts as a Mechanism of Bias in Large Language Models (LLMs)
System prompts in Large Language Models (LLMs) are predefined directives that guide model behaviour, taking precedence over user inputs in text processing and generation. LLM deployers increasingly use them to ensure consistent responses across contexts. While model providers set a foundation of system prompts, deployers and third-party developers can append additional prompts without visibility into others' additions, while this layered implementation remains entirely hidden from end-users. As…