A Novel Nuanced Conversation Evaluation Framework for Large Language Models in Mental Health

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Marrapese, Alexander, Suleiman, Basem, Ullah, Imdad, Kim, Juno
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866910367827886080
author Marrapese, Alexander
Suleiman, Basem
Ullah, Imdad
Kim, Juno
author_facet Marrapese, Alexander
Suleiman, Basem
Ullah, Imdad
Kim, Juno
contents Understanding the conversation abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) can help lead to its more cautious and appropriate deployment. This is especially important for safety-critical domains like mental health, where someone's life may depend on the exact wording of a response to an urgent question. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for evaluating the nuanced conversation abilities of LLMs. Within it, we develop a series of quantitative metrics developed from literature on using psychotherapy conversation analysis literature. While we ensure that our framework and metrics are transferable by researchers to relevant adjacent domains, we apply them to the mental health field. We use our framework to evaluate several popular frontier LLMs, including some GPT and Llama models, through a verified mental health dataset. Our results show that GPT4 Turbo can perform significantly more similarly to verified therapists than other selected LLMs. We conduct additional analysis to examine how LLM conversation performance varies across specific mental health topics. Our results indicate that GPT4 Turbo performs well in achieving high correlation with verified therapists in particular topics such as Parenting and Relationships. We believe our contributions will help researchers develop better LLMs that, in turn, will more positively support people's lives.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_09705
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Novel Nuanced Conversation Evaluation Framework for Large Language Models in Mental Health
Marrapese, Alexander
Suleiman, Basem
Ullah, Imdad
Kim, Juno
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Emerging Technologies
Understanding the conversation abilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) can help lead to its more cautious and appropriate deployment. This is especially important for safety-critical domains like mental health, where someone's life may depend on the exact wording of a response to an urgent question. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for evaluating the nuanced conversation abilities of LLMs. Within it, we develop a series of quantitative metrics developed from literature on using psychotherapy conversation analysis literature. While we ensure that our framework and metrics are transferable by researchers to relevant adjacent domains, we apply them to the mental health field. We use our framework to evaluate several popular frontier LLMs, including some GPT and Llama models, through a verified mental health dataset. Our results show that GPT4 Turbo can perform significantly more similarly to verified therapists than other selected LLMs. We conduct additional analysis to examine how LLM conversation performance varies across specific mental health topics. Our results indicate that GPT4 Turbo performs well in achieving high correlation with verified therapists in particular topics such as Parenting and Relationships. We believe our contributions will help researchers develop better LLMs that, in turn, will more positively support people's lives.
title A Novel Nuanced Conversation Evaluation Framework for Large Language Models in Mental Health
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Emerging Technologies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.09705