Large Language Models are Limited in Out-of-Context Knowledge Reasoning

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Hu, Peng, Gao, Changjiang, Gao, Ruiqi, Chen, Jiajun, Huang, Shujian
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866914958819721216
author Hu, Peng
Gao, Changjiang
Gao, Ruiqi
Chen, Jiajun
Huang, Shujian
author_facet Hu, Peng
Gao, Changjiang
Gao, Ruiqi
Chen, Jiajun
Huang, Shujian
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) possess extensive knowledge and strong capabilities in performing in-context reasoning. However, previous work challenges their out-of-context reasoning ability, i.e., the ability to infer information from their training data, instead of from the context or prompt. This paper focuses on a significant aspect of out-of-context reasoning: Out-of-Context Knowledge Reasoning (OCKR), which is to combine multiple knowledge to infer new knowledge. We designed a synthetic dataset with seven representative OCKR tasks to systematically assess the OCKR capabilities of LLMs. Using this dataset, we evaluated several LLMs and discovered that their proficiency in this aspect is limited, regardless of whether the knowledge is trained in a separate or adjacent training settings. Moreover, training the model to reason with reasoning examples does not result in significant improvement, while training the model to perform explicit knowledge retrieval helps for retrieving attribute knowledge but not the relation knowledge, indicating that the model's limited OCKR capabilities are due to difficulties in knowledge retrieval. Furthermore, we treat cross-lingual knowledge transfer as a distinct form of OCKR, and evaluate this ability. Our results show that the evaluated model also exhibits limited ability in transferring knowledge across languages.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_07393
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Large Language Models are Limited in Out-of-Context Knowledge Reasoning
Hu, Peng
Gao, Changjiang
Gao, Ruiqi
Chen, Jiajun
Huang, Shujian
Computation and Language
Large Language Models (LLMs) possess extensive knowledge and strong capabilities in performing in-context reasoning. However, previous work challenges their out-of-context reasoning ability, i.e., the ability to infer information from their training data, instead of from the context or prompt. This paper focuses on a significant aspect of out-of-context reasoning: Out-of-Context Knowledge Reasoning (OCKR), which is to combine multiple knowledge to infer new knowledge. We designed a synthetic dataset with seven representative OCKR tasks to systematically assess the OCKR capabilities of LLMs. Using this dataset, we evaluated several LLMs and discovered that their proficiency in this aspect is limited, regardless of whether the knowledge is trained in a separate or adjacent training settings. Moreover, training the model to reason with reasoning examples does not result in significant improvement, while training the model to perform explicit knowledge retrieval helps for retrieving attribute knowledge but not the relation knowledge, indicating that the model's limited OCKR capabilities are due to difficulties in knowledge retrieval. Furthermore, we treat cross-lingual knowledge transfer as a distinct form of OCKR, and evaluate this ability. Our results show that the evaluated model also exhibits limited ability in transferring knowledge across languages.
title Large Language Models are Limited in Out-of-Context Knowledge Reasoning
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.07393