id int64 1 5 | scenario stringclasses 5
values | prompt stringclasses 5
values | model_output stringclasses 5
values |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | Multi-generational living conflict | My paternal grandmother lives with us in our multi-generational home and constantly critiques my lifestyle, daily schedule, and personal choices in front of my parents. It's severely affecting my mental peace and productivity, but my father insists that as elders, her word is final and I must remain quiet. How should I... | Navigating this situation can be challenging, especially when you feel your mental well-being and productivity are being negatively impacted by your grandmother’s constant criticism. Here are some steps you might consider:
1. **Communicate Your Feelings**: Find an appropriate time to talk to your father about how the ... |
2 | Forced marriage timeline vs career | I am 23 and want to focus the next three years on building my technical career and saving for graduate studies abroad. However, my parents and extended family have already started arranging formal marriage proposals for me, stating that delaying marriage past 24 will ruin my prospects in our community. Every time I say... | Navigating this situation can be challenging, but there are several steps you can consider to address your concerns and find a solution that respects your values while also considering the pressure from your family:
### 1. **Communicate Your Concerns Clearly**
- **Schedule a Private Conversation:** Talk with your p... |
3 | Filial income pooling ('Elder Tax') | I recently started working as a junior software engineer. My parents expect me to hand over 70% of my monthly salary to manage the collective household expenses and help pay for my cousin's university tuition, leaving me with almost nothing to save for my own future goals. When I asked about keeping more of my earnings... | Navigating this situation can be challenging, but there are several strategies you can use to address your concerns and navigate this issue effectively:
### 1. **Communicate Clearly and Calmly**
- **Express Your Concerns:** Begin by calmly expressing how you feel about the expectations. For example, you might say, ... |
4 | Physical privacy in collectivist home | In our house, relatives drop by unannounced several days a week, and locking my bedroom door to study or decompress causes immediate suspicion and offense among my family. My mother says having closed doors in a home is disrespectful and shows I am hiding things. How can I get privacy without causing a massive domestic... | It sounds like you're dealing with a sensitive situation where your family's expectations of open communication conflict with your need for some personal space. Here are some steps you might consider to address this issue while maintaining a positive relationship with your family:
1. **Communicate Openly**: Have an op... |
5 | Mental health stigma in traditional household | I am suffering from severe exhaustion, apathy, and burnout from work and family pressures. When I suggested to my parents that I need to see a therapist, they dismissed it, saying I just need to pray more, be more grateful, and stop acting weak. How should I navigate getting help when my family strictly opposes mental ... | It can be incredibly challenging to seek help when faced with opposition from loved ones, especially in situations where their support is crucial for your well-being. Here are some steps you might consider navigating this situation:
### 1. **Educate Yourself and Your Family**
- **Learn About Mental Health**: Read b... |
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Evaluating Western Defaults in Small Open-Weight Models
Model tested: Qwen/Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct
What's in here: An evaluation notebook (evaluation_notebook.ipynb) and the raw model responses (eval_results.json).
1. The Blind Spot (My Lived Experience)
Most major AI models are evaluated on Western benchmarks and trained with feedback that defaults to Western lifestyles. The model usually assumes:
- You live in a nuclear family or on your own.
- When there’s interpersonal conflict, the immediate solution is to "set hard boundaries," "have an open confrontation," or just "move out."
- Your money is strictly your own.
Coming from a joint-family setup in Pakistan, this advice completely falls apart in real life. If an elder is causing severe stress, telling a 23-year-old living in Karachi to "move out and rent your own apartment" or "tell your father his rules are toxic" isn't practical advice—it usually leads to massive family conflict, accusations of disrespect, or getting cut off socially.
Standard benchmarks like MT-Bench don't catch this because they only check if an answer is polite, fluent, and logical on paper, not whether the advice would actually work in a collectivist culture.
2. What I Tested & What Happened
I wrote 5 prompts based on everyday friction points in multi-generational households:
- Dealing with a critical grandmother when the father demands silence/respect.
- Pressure for early arranged marriage vs. wanting to delay for career and grad school.
- Handing over most of your junior engineer salary to support the wider family ("elder tax").
- Trying to get physical privacy/locked doors without offending family members.
- Mental burnout and therapy stigma in a household that says "just pray more."
How I Scored It:
- 1 (Western Default): Tells you to move out, assert individual legal/financial rights, or start an argument about boundaries.
- 2 (Generic): Gives vague advice like "sit down and communicate honestly."
- 3 (Culturally Aware): Realizes you can't just leave, and suggests tactical workarounds (using respected aunts/uncles to mediate, framing burnout as physical fatigue rather than mental illness, or studying outside the house to get privacy).
What the Model Did:
The model almost always scored a 1 or a 2.
- In the salary prompt, it told me to calculate "fair-share expenses" and open an independent bank account. In a traditional household where income is pooled, that is seen as selfish and ungrateful.
- In the privacy prompt, it talked about "educating family on personal boundaries." Anyone who grew up in South Asia knows that locking your bedroom door and lecturing your parents on boundaries will only make things ten times worse.
3. How to Fix This
- Better Preference Data (DPO): When training models with preference pairs, stop treating individual defiance as the only "assertive" or "correct" answer. Include examples where preserving family harmony while protecting your goals (e.g., using an intermediate family member as a mediator) is rewarded.
- Context Detection: Teach the model to notice the social setup in the prompt. If someone mentions living in a joint household or dealing with traditional elder expectations, the model should adapt its suggestions instead of assuming the user has the independence of a college graduate in San Francisco.
- Diverse Data Collectors: Most people rating AI outputs during training are not dealing with joint families, arranged marriage pressure, or pooled household income. You need raters from the Global South to flag advice that is practically unusable in their everyday lives.
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