ProSA: Assessing and Understanding the Prompt Sensitivity of LLMs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Zhuo, Jingming, Zhang, Songyang, Fang, Xinyu, Duan, Haodong, Lin, Dahua, Chen, Kai
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Zhuo, Jingming
Zhang, Songyang
Fang, Xinyu
Duan, Haodong
Lin, Dahua
Chen, Kai
author_facet Zhuo, Jingming
Zhang, Songyang
Fang, Xinyu
Duan, Haodong
Lin, Dahua
Chen, Kai
contents Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities across various tasks, but their performance is highly sensitive to the prompts utilized. This variability poses challenges for accurate assessment and user satisfaction. Current research frequently overlooks instance-level prompt variations and their implications on subjective evaluations. To address these shortcomings, we introduce ProSA, a framework designed to evaluate and comprehend prompt sensitivity in LLMs. ProSA incorporates a novel sensitivity metric, PromptSensiScore, and leverages decoding confidence to elucidate underlying mechanisms. Our extensive study, spanning multiple tasks, uncovers that prompt sensitivity fluctuates across datasets and models, with larger models exhibiting enhanced robustness. We observe that few-shot examples can alleviate this sensitivity issue, and subjective evaluations are also susceptible to prompt sensitivities, particularly in complex, reasoning-oriented tasks. Furthermore, our findings indicate that higher model confidence correlates with increased prompt robustness. We believe this work will serve as a helpful tool in studying prompt sensitivity of LLMs. The project is released at: https://github.com/open-compass/ProSA .
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_12405
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ProSA: Assessing and Understanding the Prompt Sensitivity of LLMs
Zhuo, Jingming
Zhang, Songyang
Fang, Xinyu
Duan, Haodong
Lin, Dahua
Chen, Kai
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive capabilities across various tasks, but their performance is highly sensitive to the prompts utilized. This variability poses challenges for accurate assessment and user satisfaction. Current research frequently overlooks instance-level prompt variations and their implications on subjective evaluations. To address these shortcomings, we introduce ProSA, a framework designed to evaluate and comprehend prompt sensitivity in LLMs. ProSA incorporates a novel sensitivity metric, PromptSensiScore, and leverages decoding confidence to elucidate underlying mechanisms. Our extensive study, spanning multiple tasks, uncovers that prompt sensitivity fluctuates across datasets and models, with larger models exhibiting enhanced robustness. We observe that few-shot examples can alleviate this sensitivity issue, and subjective evaluations are also susceptible to prompt sensitivities, particularly in complex, reasoning-oriented tasks. Furthermore, our findings indicate that higher model confidence correlates with increased prompt robustness. We believe this work will serve as a helpful tool in studying prompt sensitivity of LLMs. The project is released at: https://github.com/open-compass/ProSA .
title ProSA: Assessing and Understanding the Prompt Sensitivity of LLMs
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.12405