"Let's Argue Both Sides": Argument Generation Can Force Small Models to Utilize Previously Inaccessible Reasoning Capabilities

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Miandoab, Kaveh Eskandari, Sarathy, Vasanth
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Miandoab, Kaveh Eskandari
Sarathy, Vasanth
author_facet Miandoab, Kaveh Eskandari
Sarathy, Vasanth
contents Large Language Models (LLMs), despite achieving state-of-the-art results in a number of evaluation tasks, struggle to maintain their performance when logical reasoning is strictly required to correctly infer a prediction. In this work, we propose Argument Generation as a method of forcing models to utilize their reasoning capabilities when other approaches such as chain-of-thought reasoning prove insufficient. Our method involves the generation of arguments for each possible inference result, and asking the end model to rank the generated arguments. We show that Argument Generation can serve as an appropriate substitute for zero-shot prompting techniques without the requirement to add layers of complexity. Furthermore, we argue that knowledge-probing techniques such as chain-of-thought reasoning and Argument Generation are only useful when further reasoning is required to infer a prediction, making them auxiliary to more common zero-shot approaches. Finally, we demonstrate that our approach forces larger gains in smaller language models, showcasing a complex relationship between model size and prompting methods in foundation models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_12997
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle "Let's Argue Both Sides": Argument Generation Can Force Small Models to Utilize Previously Inaccessible Reasoning Capabilities
Miandoab, Kaveh Eskandari
Sarathy, Vasanth
Computation and Language
Large Language Models (LLMs), despite achieving state-of-the-art results in a number of evaluation tasks, struggle to maintain their performance when logical reasoning is strictly required to correctly infer a prediction. In this work, we propose Argument Generation as a method of forcing models to utilize their reasoning capabilities when other approaches such as chain-of-thought reasoning prove insufficient. Our method involves the generation of arguments for each possible inference result, and asking the end model to rank the generated arguments. We show that Argument Generation can serve as an appropriate substitute for zero-shot prompting techniques without the requirement to add layers of complexity. Furthermore, we argue that knowledge-probing techniques such as chain-of-thought reasoning and Argument Generation are only useful when further reasoning is required to infer a prediction, making them auxiliary to more common zero-shot approaches. Finally, we demonstrate that our approach forces larger gains in smaller language models, showcasing a complex relationship between model size and prompting methods in foundation models.
title "Let's Argue Both Sides": Argument Generation Can Force Small Models to Utilize Previously Inaccessible Reasoning Capabilities
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.12997