Argument Quality Assessment in the Age of Instruction-Following Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wachsmuth, Henning, Lapesa, Gabriella, Cabrio, Elena, Lauscher, Anne, Park, Joonsuk, Vecchi, Eva Maria, Villata, Serena, Ziegenbein, Timon
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Wachsmuth, Henning
Lapesa, Gabriella
Cabrio, Elena
Lauscher, Anne
Park, Joonsuk
Vecchi, Eva Maria
Villata, Serena
Ziegenbein, Timon
author_facet Wachsmuth, Henning
Lapesa, Gabriella
Cabrio, Elena
Lauscher, Anne
Park, Joonsuk
Vecchi, Eva Maria
Villata, Serena
Ziegenbein, Timon
contents The computational treatment of arguments on controversial issues has been subject to extensive NLP research, due to its envisioned impact on opinion formation, decision making, writing education, and the like. A critical task in any such application is the assessment of an argument's quality - but it is also particularly challenging. In this position paper, we start from a brief survey of argument quality research, where we identify the diversity of quality notions and the subjectiveness of their perception as the main hurdles towards substantial progress on argument quality assessment. We argue that the capabilities of instruction-following large language models (LLMs) to leverage knowledge across contexts enable a much more reliable assessment. Rather than just fine-tuning LLMs towards leaderboard chasing on assessment tasks, they need to be instructed systematically with argumentation theories and scenarios as well as with ways to solve argument-related problems. We discuss the real-world opportunities and ethical issues emerging thereby.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_16084
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Argument Quality Assessment in the Age of Instruction-Following Large Language Models
Wachsmuth, Henning
Lapesa, Gabriella
Cabrio, Elena
Lauscher, Anne
Park, Joonsuk
Vecchi, Eva Maria
Villata, Serena
Ziegenbein, Timon
Computation and Language
The computational treatment of arguments on controversial issues has been subject to extensive NLP research, due to its envisioned impact on opinion formation, decision making, writing education, and the like. A critical task in any such application is the assessment of an argument's quality - but it is also particularly challenging. In this position paper, we start from a brief survey of argument quality research, where we identify the diversity of quality notions and the subjectiveness of their perception as the main hurdles towards substantial progress on argument quality assessment. We argue that the capabilities of instruction-following large language models (LLMs) to leverage knowledge across contexts enable a much more reliable assessment. Rather than just fine-tuning LLMs towards leaderboard chasing on assessment tasks, they need to be instructed systematically with argumentation theories and scenarios as well as with ways to solve argument-related problems. We discuss the real-world opportunities and ethical issues emerging thereby.
title Argument Quality Assessment in the Age of Instruction-Following Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16084