Studying Large Language Model Behaviors Under Context-Memory Conflicts With Real Documents

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Main Authors: Kortukov, Evgenii, Rubinstein, Alexander, Nguyen, Elisa, Oh, Seong Joon
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Kortukov, Evgenii
Rubinstein, Alexander
Nguyen, Elisa
Oh, Seong Joon
author_facet Kortukov, Evgenii
Rubinstein, Alexander
Nguyen, Elisa
Oh, Seong Joon
contents Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) mitigates many problems of fully parametric language models, such as temporal degradation, hallucinations, and lack of grounding. In RAG, the model's knowledge can be updated from documents provided in context. This leads to cases of conflict between the model's parametric knowledge and the contextual information, where the model may not always update its knowledge. Previous work studied context-memory knowledge conflicts by creating synthetic documents that contradict the model's correct parametric answers. We present a framework for studying such knowledge conflicts in a realistic setup. We update incorrect parametric knowledge using real conflicting documents. This reflects how knowledge conflicts arise in practice. In this realistic scenario, we find that knowledge updates fail less often than previously reported. In cases where the models still fail to update their answers, we find a parametric bias: the incorrect parametric answer appearing in context makes the knowledge update likelier to fail. These results suggest that the factual parametric knowledge of LLMs can negatively influence their reading abilities and behaviors. Our code is available at https://github.com/kortukov/realistic_knowledge_conflicts/ .
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_16032
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Studying Large Language Model Behaviors Under Context-Memory Conflicts With Real Documents
Kortukov, Evgenii
Rubinstein, Alexander
Nguyen, Elisa
Oh, Seong Joon
Machine Learning
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) mitigates many problems of fully parametric language models, such as temporal degradation, hallucinations, and lack of grounding. In RAG, the model's knowledge can be updated from documents provided in context. This leads to cases of conflict between the model's parametric knowledge and the contextual information, where the model may not always update its knowledge. Previous work studied context-memory knowledge conflicts by creating synthetic documents that contradict the model's correct parametric answers. We present a framework for studying such knowledge conflicts in a realistic setup. We update incorrect parametric knowledge using real conflicting documents. This reflects how knowledge conflicts arise in practice. In this realistic scenario, we find that knowledge updates fail less often than previously reported. In cases where the models still fail to update their answers, we find a parametric bias: the incorrect parametric answer appearing in context makes the knowledge update likelier to fail. These results suggest that the factual parametric knowledge of LLMs can negatively influence their reading abilities and behaviors. Our code is available at https://github.com/kortukov/realistic_knowledge_conflicts/ .
title Studying Large Language Model Behaviors Under Context-Memory Conflicts With Real Documents
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.16032