Trustworthiness evaluation of Large language models using multi-criteria decision making

Abstract

As Large language models (LLMs) become increasingly integrated into high-stakes applications, ensuring their trustworthiness has emerged as a critical research concern. This study proposes a novel evaluation framework that applies a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methodology, specifically the hesitant fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP), to assess and rank LLMs based on five key trust dimensions: fairness, robustness, integrity, explainability, and safety. Drawing from expert evaluations, the framework systematically determines the relative importance of each criterion and applies a weighted scoring approach to compare seven leading LLMs, including both proprietary models such as GPT-3.5, GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Gemini 1.5 and open-source models such as Llama 3.1, Mistral Large 2 and DeepSeek V3. Results reveal GPT-4o as the most trustworthy model, significantly outperforming its peers, particularly in robustness and fairness. Open-source models showed lower scores, especially in safety and explainability, highlighting persistent gaps in their alignment with trust expectations. The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of MCDM in capturing expert uncertainty and prioritizing trust criteria, offering a robust and adaptable framework for evaluating LLMs in dynamic and sensitive domains.