Grounding Gaps in Language Model Generations

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Shaikh, Omar, Gligorić, Kristina, Khetan, Ashna, Gerstgrasser, Matthias, Yang, Diyi, Jurafsky, Dan
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2023
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author Shaikh, Omar
Gligorić, Kristina
Khetan, Ashna
Gerstgrasser, Matthias
Yang, Diyi
Jurafsky, Dan
author_facet Shaikh, Omar
Gligorić, Kristina
Khetan, Ashna
Gerstgrasser, Matthias
Yang, Diyi
Jurafsky, Dan
contents Effective conversation requires common ground: a shared understanding between the participants. Common ground, however, does not emerge spontaneously in conversation. Speakers and listeners work together to both identify and construct a shared basis while avoiding misunderstanding. To accomplish grounding, humans rely on a range of dialogue acts, like clarification (What do you mean?) and acknowledgment (I understand.). However, it is unclear whether large language models (LLMs) generate text that reflects human grounding. To this end, we curate a set of grounding acts and propose corresponding metrics that quantify attempted grounding. We study whether LLM generations contain grounding acts, simulating turn-taking from several dialogue datasets and comparing results to humans. We find that -- compared to humans -- LLMs generate language with less conversational grounding, instead generating text that appears to simply presume common ground. To understand the roots of the identified grounding gap, we examine the role of instruction tuning and preference optimization, finding that training on contemporary preference data leads to a reduction in generated grounding acts. Altogether, we highlight the need for more research investigating conversational grounding in human-AI interaction.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_09144
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Grounding Gaps in Language Model Generations
Shaikh, Omar
Gligorić, Kristina
Khetan, Ashna
Gerstgrasser, Matthias
Yang, Diyi
Jurafsky, Dan
Computation and Language
Human-Computer Interaction
Effective conversation requires common ground: a shared understanding between the participants. Common ground, however, does not emerge spontaneously in conversation. Speakers and listeners work together to both identify and construct a shared basis while avoiding misunderstanding. To accomplish grounding, humans rely on a range of dialogue acts, like clarification (What do you mean?) and acknowledgment (I understand.). However, it is unclear whether large language models (LLMs) generate text that reflects human grounding. To this end, we curate a set of grounding acts and propose corresponding metrics that quantify attempted grounding. We study whether LLM generations contain grounding acts, simulating turn-taking from several dialogue datasets and comparing results to humans. We find that -- compared to humans -- LLMs generate language with less conversational grounding, instead generating text that appears to simply presume common ground. To understand the roots of the identified grounding gap, we examine the role of instruction tuning and preference optimization, finding that training on contemporary preference data leads to a reduction in generated grounding acts. Altogether, we highlight the need for more research investigating conversational grounding in human-AI interaction.
title Grounding Gaps in Language Model Generations
topic Computation and Language
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09144