Estimating Causal Effects of Text Interventions Leveraging LLMs

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Guo, Siyi, Marmarelis, Myrl G., Morstatter, Fred, Lerman, Kristina
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Guo, Siyi
Marmarelis, Myrl G.
Morstatter, Fred
Lerman, Kristina
author_facet Guo, Siyi
Marmarelis, Myrl G.
Morstatter, Fred
Lerman, Kristina
contents Quantifying the effects of textual interventions in social systems, such as reducing anger in social media posts to see its impact on engagement, is challenging. Real-world interventions are often infeasible, necessitating reliance on observational data. Traditional causal inference methods, typically designed for binary or discrete treatments, are inadequate for handling the complex, high-dimensional textual data. This paper addresses these challenges by proposing CausalDANN, a novel approach to estimate causal effects using text transformations facilitated by large language models (LLMs). Unlike existing methods, our approach accommodates arbitrary textual interventions and leverages text-level classifiers with domain adaptation ability to produce robust effect estimates against domain shifts, even when only the control group is observed. This flexibility in handling various text interventions is a key advancement in causal estimation for textual data, offering opportunities to better understand human behaviors and develop effective interventions within social systems.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_21474
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Estimating Causal Effects of Text Interventions Leveraging LLMs
Guo, Siyi
Marmarelis, Myrl G.
Morstatter, Fred
Lerman, Kristina
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Quantifying the effects of textual interventions in social systems, such as reducing anger in social media posts to see its impact on engagement, is challenging. Real-world interventions are often infeasible, necessitating reliance on observational data. Traditional causal inference methods, typically designed for binary or discrete treatments, are inadequate for handling the complex, high-dimensional textual data. This paper addresses these challenges by proposing CausalDANN, a novel approach to estimate causal effects using text transformations facilitated by large language models (LLMs). Unlike existing methods, our approach accommodates arbitrary textual interventions and leverages text-level classifiers with domain adaptation ability to produce robust effect estimates against domain shifts, even when only the control group is observed. This flexibility in handling various text interventions is a key advancement in causal estimation for textual data, offering opportunities to better understand human behaviors and develop effective interventions within social systems.
title Estimating Causal Effects of Text Interventions Leveraging LLMs
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.21474