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Main Authors: Oesterheld, Caspar, Cooper, Emery, Kodama, Miles, Nguyen, Linh Chi, Perez, Ethan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10588
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author Oesterheld, Caspar
Cooper, Emery
Kodama, Miles
Nguyen, Linh Chi
Perez, Ethan
author_facet Oesterheld, Caspar
Cooper, Emery
Kodama, Miles
Nguyen, Linh Chi
Perez, Ethan
contents We introduce a dataset of natural-language questions in the decision theory of so-called Newcomb-like problems. Newcomb-like problems include, for instance, decision problems in which an agent interacts with a similar other agent, and thus has to reason about the fact that the other agent will likely reason in similar ways. Evaluating LLM reasoning about Newcomb-like problems is important because interactions between foundation-model-based agents will often be Newcomb-like. Some ways of reasoning about Newcomb-like problems may allow for greater cooperation between models. Our dataset contains both capabilities questions (i.e., questions with a unique, uncontroversially correct answer) and attitude questions (i.e., questions about which decision theorists would disagree). We use our dataset for an investigation of decision-theoretical capabilities and expressed attitudes and their interplay in existing models (different models by OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, GDM, Reka, etc.), as well as models under simple prompt-based interventions. We find, among other things, that attitudes vary significantly between existing models; that high capabilities are associated with attitudes more favorable toward so-called evidential decision theory; and that attitudes are consistent across different types of questions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_10588
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A dataset of questions on decision-theoretic reasoning in Newcomb-like problems
Oesterheld, Caspar
Cooper, Emery
Kodama, Miles
Nguyen, Linh Chi
Perez, Ethan
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.7
We introduce a dataset of natural-language questions in the decision theory of so-called Newcomb-like problems. Newcomb-like problems include, for instance, decision problems in which an agent interacts with a similar other agent, and thus has to reason about the fact that the other agent will likely reason in similar ways. Evaluating LLM reasoning about Newcomb-like problems is important because interactions between foundation-model-based agents will often be Newcomb-like. Some ways of reasoning about Newcomb-like problems may allow for greater cooperation between models. Our dataset contains both capabilities questions (i.e., questions with a unique, uncontroversially correct answer) and attitude questions (i.e., questions about which decision theorists would disagree). We use our dataset for an investigation of decision-theoretical capabilities and expressed attitudes and their interplay in existing models (different models by OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, GDM, Reka, etc.), as well as models under simple prompt-based interventions. We find, among other things, that attitudes vary significantly between existing models; that high capabilities are associated with attitudes more favorable toward so-called evidential decision theory; and that attitudes are consistent across different types of questions.
title A dataset of questions on decision-theoretic reasoning in Newcomb-like problems
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.7
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10588