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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhao, Theodore, Wei, Mu, Preston, J. Samuel, Poon, Hoifung
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.16564
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author Zhao, Theodore
Wei, Mu
Preston, J. Samuel
Poon, Hoifung
author_facet Zhao, Theodore
Wei, Mu
Preston, J. Samuel
Poon, Hoifung
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown impressive abilities in many applications. When a concrete and precise answer is desired, it is important to have a quantitative estimation of the potential error rate. However, this can be challenging due to the text-in-text-out nature of generative models. We present a method based on Pareto optimization that generates a risk score to estimate the probability of error in an LLM response by integrating multiple sources of information. We prove theoretically that the error estimator optimized in our framework aligns with the LLM and the information sources in an Pareto optimal manner. Experimental results show that the risk scores estimated by our method are well correlated with the true LLM error rate, thus facilitating error correction. By dynamically combining with prompting strategies such as self-verification and information retrieval, we demonstrate the proposed method can be utilized to increase the performance of an LLM, surpassing state-of-the-art task specific models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2306_16564
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Pareto Optimal Learning for Estimating Large Language Model Errors
Zhao, Theodore
Wei, Mu
Preston, J. Samuel
Poon, Hoifung
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown impressive abilities in many applications. When a concrete and precise answer is desired, it is important to have a quantitative estimation of the potential error rate. However, this can be challenging due to the text-in-text-out nature of generative models. We present a method based on Pareto optimization that generates a risk score to estimate the probability of error in an LLM response by integrating multiple sources of information. We prove theoretically that the error estimator optimized in our framework aligns with the LLM and the information sources in an Pareto optimal manner. Experimental results show that the risk scores estimated by our method are well correlated with the true LLM error rate, thus facilitating error correction. By dynamically combining with prompting strategies such as self-verification and information retrieval, we demonstrate the proposed method can be utilized to increase the performance of an LLM, surpassing state-of-the-art task specific models.
title Pareto Optimal Learning for Estimating Large Language Model Errors
topic Computation and Language
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.16564