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| Eleonore Dodivers and Ismael Rafai |
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| ''Uncovering the fairness of AI: exploring focal point, inequality aversion, and altruism in ChatGPT's dictator game decisions'' |
| ( 2026, Vol. 0 No.0 ) |
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| This paper investigates Artificial intelligence Large Language Models (AI-LLM) social preferences' in Dictator Games. Brookins and Debacker (2024, Economics Bulletin) previously observed a tendency of ChatGPT-3.5 to give away half its endowment in a standard Dictator Game and interpreted this as an expression of fairness. We replicate their experiment and introduce a multiplicative factor on donations which varies the efficiency of the transfer. Varying transfer efficiency disentangles three donation explanations (inequality aversion, altruism, or focal point). Our results show that ChatGPT-3.5 donations should be interpreted as a focal point rather than the expression of fairness. In contrast, a more advanced version (ChatGPT-4o) made decisions that are better explained by altruistic motives than inequality aversion. Our study highlights the necessity to explore the parameter space, when designing experiments to study AI-LLM preferences. |
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| Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models, Dictator Games, Experimental Economics, Social Preferences |
JEL: D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making: General
C9 - Design of Experiments: General |
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| Manuscript Received : Jun 09 2025 | | Manuscript Accepted : Jan 06 2026 |
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