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Main Authors: Ju, Tianjie, Chen, Yijin, Yuan, Xinwei, Zhang, Zhuosheng, Du, Wei, Zheng, Yubin, Liu, Gongshen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.11900
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author Ju, Tianjie
Chen, Yijin
Yuan, Xinwei
Zhang, Zhuosheng
Du, Wei
Zheng, Yubin
Liu, Gongshen
author_facet Ju, Tianjie
Chen, Yijin
Yuan, Xinwei
Zhang, Zhuosheng
Du, Wei
Zheng, Yubin
Liu, Gongshen
contents Recent work has showcased the powerful capability of large language models (LLMs) in recalling knowledge and reasoning. However, the reliability of LLMs in combining these two capabilities into reasoning through multi-hop facts has not been widely explored. This paper systematically investigates the possibilities for LLMs to utilize shortcuts based on direct connections between the initial and terminal entities of multi-hop knowledge. We first explore the existence of factual shortcuts through Knowledge Neurons, revealing that: (i) the strength of factual shortcuts is highly correlated with the frequency of co-occurrence of initial and terminal entities in the pre-training corpora; (ii) few-shot prompting leverage more shortcuts in answering multi-hop questions compared to chain-of-thought prompting. Then, we analyze the risks posed by factual shortcuts from the perspective of multi-hop knowledge editing. Analysis shows that approximately 20% of the failures are attributed to shortcuts, and the initial and terminal entities in these failure instances usually have higher co-occurrences in the pre-training corpus. Finally, we propose erasing shortcut neurons to mitigate the associated risks and find that this approach significantly reduces failures in multiple-hop knowledge editing caused by shortcuts.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_11900
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Investigating Multi-Hop Factual Shortcuts in Knowledge Editing of Large Language Models
Ju, Tianjie
Chen, Yijin
Yuan, Xinwei
Zhang, Zhuosheng
Du, Wei
Zheng, Yubin
Liu, Gongshen
Computation and Language
Recent work has showcased the powerful capability of large language models (LLMs) in recalling knowledge and reasoning. However, the reliability of LLMs in combining these two capabilities into reasoning through multi-hop facts has not been widely explored. This paper systematically investigates the possibilities for LLMs to utilize shortcuts based on direct connections between the initial and terminal entities of multi-hop knowledge. We first explore the existence of factual shortcuts through Knowledge Neurons, revealing that: (i) the strength of factual shortcuts is highly correlated with the frequency of co-occurrence of initial and terminal entities in the pre-training corpora; (ii) few-shot prompting leverage more shortcuts in answering multi-hop questions compared to chain-of-thought prompting. Then, we analyze the risks posed by factual shortcuts from the perspective of multi-hop knowledge editing. Analysis shows that approximately 20% of the failures are attributed to shortcuts, and the initial and terminal entities in these failure instances usually have higher co-occurrences in the pre-training corpus. Finally, we propose erasing shortcut neurons to mitigate the associated risks and find that this approach significantly reduces failures in multiple-hop knowledge editing caused by shortcuts.
title Investigating Multi-Hop Factual Shortcuts in Knowledge Editing of Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.11900