One world, one opinion? The superstar effect in LLM responses

AbstractAs large language models (LLMs) are shaping the way information is shared and accessed online, their opinions have the potential to influence a wide audience. This study examines who is predicted by the studied LLMs as the most prominent figures across various fields, while using prompts in ten different languages to explore the influence of linguistic diversity. Our findings reveal low diversity in responses, with a small number of figures dominating recognition across languages (also known as the “superstar effect”). These results highlight the risk of narrowing global knowledge representation when LLMs are used to retrieve subjective information.