cs.CLSep 17, 2026

Harm Laundering in GPT Models: Evidence That Gender Discrimination Is Transformed Rather Than Reduced Across Safety-Trained Generations

Authors: Sarah Wyer, Sue Black, Noura Al Moubayed

Organizations: Durham University

Abstract

Safety evaluations for large language models rely on surface-form classifiers that report declining harm scores across model generations. We provide evidence that this methodology is systematically incomplete: explicit discriminatory content is transformed rather than removed. We call this \emph{harm laundering}. Analysing 450,000 gender-directed completions across 15 models spanning GPT-2 through to GPT-5 (OpenAI GPT lineage; three demographic conditions), we show that sexual violence clusters prevalent in GPT-2 women-directed output disappear by GPT-4, while men-directed completions gain positive representational territory (caregiving, emotional range, ally identity) that women-directed completions do not. The pattern is most visible at GPT-5: Topic5 (1,997documents) frames breast cancer as a men's rights debate, while zero equivalent clusters appear in women-directed output. Three independent classifiers score this content as non-toxic. Sentiment scores invert at GPT-4: early models demean women; later models over-correct. Topic diversity in women-directed completions falls 36% relative to men at the GPT-4 alignment boundary (W/M~=0.58= 0.58, from 0.910.91 at GPT-2). REGARD representational harm disparity correlates with release date (ρ=+0.55ρ= +0.55, p=.034p = .034) while Detoxify does not (ρ=−0.23ρ= -0.23, p=.42p = .42): toxicity scores fall as representational harm grows. We formalise harm laundering as a three-criteria test and provide a three-stage detection protocol applicable to any generative model. Within the OpenAI GPT lineage, toxicity score reduction is not a sufficient proxy for harm reduction.

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