Assessment and manipulation of latent constructs in pre-trained language models using psychometric scales

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Reuben, Maor, Slobodin, Ortal, Elyshar, Aviad, Cohen, Idan-Chaim, Braun-Lewensohn, Orna, Cohen, Odeya, Puzis, Rami
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Reuben, Maor
Slobodin, Ortal
Elyshar, Aviad
Cohen, Idan-Chaim
Braun-Lewensohn, Orna
Cohen, Odeya
Puzis, Rami
author_facet Reuben, Maor
Slobodin, Ortal
Elyshar, Aviad
Cohen, Idan-Chaim
Braun-Lewensohn, Orna
Cohen, Odeya
Puzis, Rami
contents Human-like personality traits have recently been discovered in large language models, raising the hypothesis that their (known and as yet undiscovered) biases conform with human latent psychological constructs. While large conversational models may be tricked into answering psychometric questionnaires, the latent psychological constructs of thousands of simpler transformers, trained for other tasks, cannot be assessed because appropriate psychometric methods are currently lacking. Here, we show how standard psychological questionnaires can be reformulated into natural language inference prompts, and we provide a code library to support the psychometric assessment of arbitrary models. We demonstrate, using a sample of 88 publicly available models, the existence of human-like mental health-related constructs (including anxiety, depression, and Sense of Coherence) which conform with standard theories in human psychology and show similar correlations and mitigation strategies. The ability to interpret and rectify the performance of language models by using psychological tools can boost the development of more explainable, controllable, and trustworthy models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_19655
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Assessment and manipulation of latent constructs in pre-trained language models using psychometric scales
Reuben, Maor
Slobodin, Ortal
Elyshar, Aviad
Cohen, Idan-Chaim
Braun-Lewensohn, Orna
Cohen, Odeya
Puzis, Rami
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Human-like personality traits have recently been discovered in large language models, raising the hypothesis that their (known and as yet undiscovered) biases conform with human latent psychological constructs. While large conversational models may be tricked into answering psychometric questionnaires, the latent psychological constructs of thousands of simpler transformers, trained for other tasks, cannot be assessed because appropriate psychometric methods are currently lacking. Here, we show how standard psychological questionnaires can be reformulated into natural language inference prompts, and we provide a code library to support the psychometric assessment of arbitrary models. We demonstrate, using a sample of 88 publicly available models, the existence of human-like mental health-related constructs (including anxiety, depression, and Sense of Coherence) which conform with standard theories in human psychology and show similar correlations and mitigation strategies. The ability to interpret and rectify the performance of language models by using psychological tools can boost the development of more explainable, controllable, and trustworthy models.
title Assessment and manipulation of latent constructs in pre-trained language models using psychometric scales
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.19655