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PromptGuard: An Orchestrated Prompting Framework for Principled Synthetic Text Generation for Vulnerable Populations using LLMs with Enhanced Safety, Fairness, and Controllability

Authors: Tung Vu, Lam Nguyen, Quynh Dao

Published: 2025-09-10

arXiv ID: 2509.08910v1

Added to Library: 2025-09-12 04:01 UTC

Safety

📄 Abstract

The proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) in real-world applications poses unprecedented risks of generating harmful, biased, or misleading information to vulnerable populations including LGBTQ+ individuals, single parents, and marginalized communities. While existing safety approaches rely on post-hoc filtering or generic alignment techniques, they fail to proactively prevent harmful outputs at the generation source. This paper introduces PromptGuard, a novel modular prompting framework with our breakthrough contribution: VulnGuard Prompt, a hybrid technique that prevents harmful information generation using real-world data-driven contrastive learning. VulnGuard integrates few-shot examples from curated GitHub repositories, ethical chain-of-thought reasoning, and adaptive role-prompting to create population-specific protective barriers. Our framework employs theoretical multi-objective optimization with formal proofs demonstrating 25-30% analytical harm reduction through entropy bounds and Pareto optimality. PromptGuard orchestrates six core modules: Input Classification, VulnGuard Prompting, Ethical Principles Integration, External Tool Interaction, Output Validation, and User-System Interaction, creating an intelligent expert system for real-time harm prevention. We provide comprehensive mathematical formalization including convergence proofs, vulnerability analysis using information theory, and theoretical validation framework using GitHub-sourced datasets, establishing mathematical foundations for systematic empirical research.

🔍 Key Points

  • Introduction of PromptGuard, a modular prompting framework designed to prevent harmful synthetic text generation specifically for vulnerable populations, enhancing safety, fairness, and controllability.
  • Breakthrough contribution of VulnGuard Prompt, which employs contrastive learning with real-world data to establish population-specific protective mechanisms, achieving 25-30% analytical harm reduction.
  • Development of a comprehensive six-module architecture that integrates input classification, ethical principles, external tool interaction, and output validation to facilitate real-time harm prevention.
  • Establishment of theoretical underpinnings with proofs of convergence, multi-objective optimization, and information-theoretic safety guarantees that provide a mathematical foundation for the framework.
  • Implementation of participatory design practices and ethical governance strategies to ensure the involvement of community stakeholders in the development process, enhancing the framework's applicability and social impact.

💡 Why This Paper Matters

This paper presents a significant advancement in the ethical deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs) by proposing PromptGuard, a robust framework equipped with innovative techniques to minimize risks for vulnerable populations. The systematic integration of community-sourced ethical datasets with technical prompting strategies not only enhances the safety and fairness of AI outputs but also advocates for a more responsible AI development that prioritizes real-time harm prevention. Given the increasing reliance on LLMs in sensitive applications, this approach is timely and crucial for ensuring AI systems align with ethical standards and safeguard marginalized communities.

🎯 Why It's Interesting for AI Security Researchers

This paper is particularly relevant to AI security researchers as it addresses critical concerns surrounding the generation of harmful, biased, or misleading information by LLMs. The introduction of a proactive harm prevention framework like PromptGuard illustrates a novel approach in the AI safety domain, focusing on real-time interventions rather than post-hoc solutions. By exploring advanced techniques such as contrastive learning for ethical prompting and community engagement in AI development, the research not only contributes to theoretical foundations but also provides practical implications that can enhance the resilience and accountability of AI systems, making it a vital area of exploration for security professionals.

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