Language agents achieve superhuman synthesis of scientific knowledge

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Skarlinski, Michael D., Cox, Sam, Laurent, Jon M., Braza, James D., Hinks, Michaela, Hammerling, Michael J., Ponnapati, Manvitha, Rodriques, Samuel G., White, Andrew D.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Skarlinski, Michael D.
Cox, Sam
Laurent, Jon M.
Braza, James D.
Hinks, Michaela
Hammerling, Michael J.
Ponnapati, Manvitha
Rodriques, Samuel G.
White, Andrew D.
author_facet Skarlinski, Michael D.
Cox, Sam
Laurent, Jon M.
Braza, James D.
Hinks, Michaela
Hammerling, Michael J.
Ponnapati, Manvitha
Rodriques, Samuel G.
White, Andrew D.
contents Language models are known to hallucinate incorrect information, and it is unclear if they are sufficiently accurate and reliable for use in scientific research. We developed a rigorous human-AI comparison methodology to evaluate language model agents on real-world literature search tasks covering information retrieval, summarization, and contradiction detection tasks. We show that PaperQA2, a frontier language model agent optimized for improved factuality, matches or exceeds subject matter expert performance on three realistic literature research tasks without any restrictions on humans (i.e., full access to internet, search tools, and time). PaperQA2 writes cited, Wikipedia-style summaries of scientific topics that are significantly more accurate than existing, human-written Wikipedia articles. We also introduce a hard benchmark for scientific literature research called LitQA2 that guided design of PaperQA2, leading to it exceeding human performance. Finally, we apply PaperQA2 to identify contradictions within the scientific literature, an important scientific task that is challenging for humans. PaperQA2 identifies 2.34 +/- 1.99 contradictions per paper in a random subset of biology papers, of which 70% are validated by human experts. These results demonstrate that language model agents are now capable of exceeding domain experts across meaningful tasks on scientific literature.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_13740
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Language agents achieve superhuman synthesis of scientific knowledge
Skarlinski, Michael D.
Cox, Sam
Laurent, Jon M.
Braza, James D.
Hinks, Michaela
Hammerling, Michael J.
Ponnapati, Manvitha
Rodriques, Samuel G.
White, Andrew D.
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
Physics and Society
Language models are known to hallucinate incorrect information, and it is unclear if they are sufficiently accurate and reliable for use in scientific research. We developed a rigorous human-AI comparison methodology to evaluate language model agents on real-world literature search tasks covering information retrieval, summarization, and contradiction detection tasks. We show that PaperQA2, a frontier language model agent optimized for improved factuality, matches or exceeds subject matter expert performance on three realistic literature research tasks without any restrictions on humans (i.e., full access to internet, search tools, and time). PaperQA2 writes cited, Wikipedia-style summaries of scientific topics that are significantly more accurate than existing, human-written Wikipedia articles. We also introduce a hard benchmark for scientific literature research called LitQA2 that guided design of PaperQA2, leading to it exceeding human performance. Finally, we apply PaperQA2 to identify contradictions within the scientific literature, an important scientific task that is challenging for humans. PaperQA2 identifies 2.34 +/- 1.99 contradictions per paper in a random subset of biology papers, of which 70% are validated by human experts. These results demonstrate that language model agents are now capable of exceeding domain experts across meaningful tasks on scientific literature.
title Language agents achieve superhuman synthesis of scientific knowledge
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Information Retrieval
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13740