Value-Rich, Differently Organized: Measuring Value Expression and Organization in AI-Generated Debates

Abstract

Current evaluation of LLM-generated debate largely focuses on argumentative quality, leaving the value structure of generated arguments underexamined. We introduce a diagnostic metric framework for comparing how values are expressed and organized in human-reference and AI-generated debates. The framework separates value expression, the range of recognizable values a debate invokes, from value organization, how those values are distributed and sustained across turns. Grounded in Schwartz's Basic-10 value theory, it represents debates as multi-level value distributions over argumentative units, utterances, stances, and full debates, enabling metrics for value coverage, alignment, diffusion, and cross-turn dynamics. Across multiple generation systems, AI-generated debates are broadly value-expressive, often activating as many or more value dimensions than matched human references, but they organize these values differently. Their utterances are more locally value-diffuse, and source-blind judges distinguish value clarity from value focus. These findings show that debate evaluation should consider not only value presence, but also value organization. Code and supplementary materials are available at https://github.com/Maoyuan-li/Value-Expression-and-Organization.