VariErr NLI: Separating Annotation Error from Human Label Variation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Weber-Genzel, Leon, Peng, Siyao, de Marneffe, Marie-Catherine, Plank, Barbara
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Weber-Genzel, Leon
Peng, Siyao
de Marneffe, Marie-Catherine
Plank, Barbara
author_facet Weber-Genzel, Leon
Peng, Siyao
de Marneffe, Marie-Catherine
Plank, Barbara
contents Human label variation arises when annotators assign different labels to the same item for valid reasons, while annotation errors occur when labels are assigned for invalid reasons. These two issues are prevalent in NLP benchmarks, yet existing research has studied them in isolation. To the best of our knowledge, there exists no prior work that focuses on teasing apart error from signal, especially in cases where signal is beyond black-and-white. To fill this gap, we introduce a systematic methodology and a new dataset, VariErr (variation versus error), focusing on the NLI task in English. We propose a 2-round annotation procedure with annotators explaining each label and subsequently judging the validity of label-explanation pairs. VariErr contains 7,732 validity judgments on 1,933 explanations for 500 re-annotated MNLI items. We assess the effectiveness of various automatic error detection (AED) methods and GPTs in uncovering errors versus human label variation. We find that state-of-the-art AED methods significantly underperform GPTs and humans. While GPT-4 is the best system, it still falls short of human performance. Our methodology is applicable beyond NLI, offering fertile ground for future research on error versus plausible variation, which in turn can yield better and more trustworthy NLP systems.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_01931
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle VariErr NLI: Separating Annotation Error from Human Label Variation
Weber-Genzel, Leon
Peng, Siyao
de Marneffe, Marie-Catherine
Plank, Barbara
Computation and Language
Human label variation arises when annotators assign different labels to the same item for valid reasons, while annotation errors occur when labels are assigned for invalid reasons. These two issues are prevalent in NLP benchmarks, yet existing research has studied them in isolation. To the best of our knowledge, there exists no prior work that focuses on teasing apart error from signal, especially in cases where signal is beyond black-and-white. To fill this gap, we introduce a systematic methodology and a new dataset, VariErr (variation versus error), focusing on the NLI task in English. We propose a 2-round annotation procedure with annotators explaining each label and subsequently judging the validity of label-explanation pairs. VariErr contains 7,732 validity judgments on 1,933 explanations for 500 re-annotated MNLI items. We assess the effectiveness of various automatic error detection (AED) methods and GPTs in uncovering errors versus human label variation. We find that state-of-the-art AED methods significantly underperform GPTs and humans. While GPT-4 is the best system, it still falls short of human performance. Our methodology is applicable beyond NLI, offering fertile ground for future research on error versus plausible variation, which in turn can yield better and more trustworthy NLP systems.
title VariErr NLI: Separating Annotation Error from Human Label Variation
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.01931