Are Longer Prompts Always Better? Prompt Selection in Large Language Models for Recommendation Systems

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Hauptverfasser: Kusano, Genki, Akimoto, Kosuke, Takeoka, Kunihiro
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Kusano, Genki
Akimoto, Kosuke
Takeoka, Kunihiro
author_facet Kusano, Genki
Akimoto, Kosuke
Takeoka, Kunihiro
contents In large language models (LLM)-based recommendation systems (LLM-RSs), accurately predicting user preferences by leveraging the general knowledge of LLMs is possible without requiring extensive training data. By converting recommendation tasks into natural language inputs called prompts, LLM-RSs can efficiently solve issues that have been difficult to address due to data scarcity but are crucial in applications such as cold-start and cross-domain problems. However, when applying this in practice, selecting the prompt that matches tasks and data is essential. Although numerous prompts have been proposed in LLM-RSs and representing the target user in prompts significantly impacts recommendation accuracy, there are still no clear guidelines for selecting specific prompts. In this paper, we categorize and analyze prompts from previous research to establish practical prompt selection guidelines. Through 450 experiments with 90 prompts and five real-world datasets, we examined the relationship between prompts and dataset characteristics in recommendation accuracy. We found that no single prompt consistently outperforms others; thus, selecting prompts on the basis of dataset characteristics is crucial. Here, we propose a prompt selection method that achieves higher accuracy with minimal validation data. Because increasing the number of prompts to explore raises costs, we also introduce a cost-efficient strategy using high-performance and cost-efficient LLMs, significantly reducing exploration costs while maintaining high prediction accuracy. Our work offers valuable insights into the prompt selection, advancing accurate and efficient LLM-RSs.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_14454
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Are Longer Prompts Always Better? Prompt Selection in Large Language Models for Recommendation Systems
Kusano, Genki
Akimoto, Kosuke
Takeoka, Kunihiro
Information Retrieval
Computation and Language
In large language models (LLM)-based recommendation systems (LLM-RSs), accurately predicting user preferences by leveraging the general knowledge of LLMs is possible without requiring extensive training data. By converting recommendation tasks into natural language inputs called prompts, LLM-RSs can efficiently solve issues that have been difficult to address due to data scarcity but are crucial in applications such as cold-start and cross-domain problems. However, when applying this in practice, selecting the prompt that matches tasks and data is essential. Although numerous prompts have been proposed in LLM-RSs and representing the target user in prompts significantly impacts recommendation accuracy, there are still no clear guidelines for selecting specific prompts. In this paper, we categorize and analyze prompts from previous research to establish practical prompt selection guidelines. Through 450 experiments with 90 prompts and five real-world datasets, we examined the relationship between prompts and dataset characteristics in recommendation accuracy. We found that no single prompt consistently outperforms others; thus, selecting prompts on the basis of dataset characteristics is crucial. Here, we propose a prompt selection method that achieves higher accuracy with minimal validation data. Because increasing the number of prompts to explore raises costs, we also introduce a cost-efficient strategy using high-performance and cost-efficient LLMs, significantly reducing exploration costs while maintaining high prediction accuracy. Our work offers valuable insights into the prompt selection, advancing accurate and efficient LLM-RSs.
title Are Longer Prompts Always Better? Prompt Selection in Large Language Models for Recommendation Systems
topic Information Retrieval
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.14454