Potential and Perils of Large Language Models as Judges of Unstructured Textual Data

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bedemariam, Rewina, Perez, Natalie, Bhaduri, Sreyoshi, Kapoor, Satya, Gil, Alex, Conjar, Elizabeth, Itoku, Ikkei, Theil, David, Chadha, Aman, Nayyar, Naumaan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910791852097536
author Bedemariam, Rewina
Perez, Natalie
Bhaduri, Sreyoshi
Kapoor, Satya
Gil, Alex
Conjar, Elizabeth
Itoku, Ikkei
Theil, David
Chadha, Aman
Nayyar, Naumaan
author_facet Bedemariam, Rewina
Perez, Natalie
Bhaduri, Sreyoshi
Kapoor, Satya
Gil, Alex
Conjar, Elizabeth
Itoku, Ikkei
Theil, David
Chadha, Aman
Nayyar, Naumaan
contents Rapid advancements in large language models have unlocked remarkable capabilities when it comes to processing and summarizing unstructured text data. This has implications for the analysis of rich, open-ended datasets, such as survey responses, where LLMs hold the promise of efficiently distilling key themes and sentiments. However, as organizations increasingly turn to these powerful AI systems to make sense of textual feedback, a critical question arises, can we trust LLMs to accurately represent the perspectives contained within these text based datasets? While LLMs excel at generating human-like summaries, there is a risk that their outputs may inadvertently diverge from the true substance of the original responses. Discrepancies between the LLM-generated outputs and the actual themes present in the data could lead to flawed decision-making, with far-reaching consequences for organizations. This research investigates the effectiveness of LLM-as-judge models to evaluate the thematic alignment of summaries generated by other LLMs. We utilized an Anthropic Claude model to generate thematic summaries from open-ended survey responses, with Amazon's Titan Express, Nova Pro, and Meta's Llama serving as judges. This LLM-as-judge approach was compared to human evaluations using Cohen's kappa, Spearman's rho, and Krippendorff's alpha, validating a scalable alternative to traditional human centric evaluation methods. Our findings reveal that while LLM-as-judge offer a scalable solution comparable to human raters, humans may still excel at detecting subtle, context-specific nuances. Our research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on AI assisted text analysis. Further, we provide recommendations for future research, emphasizing the need for careful consideration when generalizing LLM-as-judge models across various contexts and use cases.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_08167
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Potential and Perils of Large Language Models as Judges of Unstructured Textual Data
Bedemariam, Rewina
Perez, Natalie
Bhaduri, Sreyoshi
Kapoor, Satya
Gil, Alex
Conjar, Elizabeth
Itoku, Ikkei
Theil, David
Chadha, Aman
Nayyar, Naumaan
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
Rapid advancements in large language models have unlocked remarkable capabilities when it comes to processing and summarizing unstructured text data. This has implications for the analysis of rich, open-ended datasets, such as survey responses, where LLMs hold the promise of efficiently distilling key themes and sentiments. However, as organizations increasingly turn to these powerful AI systems to make sense of textual feedback, a critical question arises, can we trust LLMs to accurately represent the perspectives contained within these text based datasets? While LLMs excel at generating human-like summaries, there is a risk that their outputs may inadvertently diverge from the true substance of the original responses. Discrepancies between the LLM-generated outputs and the actual themes present in the data could lead to flawed decision-making, with far-reaching consequences for organizations. This research investigates the effectiveness of LLM-as-judge models to evaluate the thematic alignment of summaries generated by other LLMs. We utilized an Anthropic Claude model to generate thematic summaries from open-ended survey responses, with Amazon's Titan Express, Nova Pro, and Meta's Llama serving as judges. This LLM-as-judge approach was compared to human evaluations using Cohen's kappa, Spearman's rho, and Krippendorff's alpha, validating a scalable alternative to traditional human centric evaluation methods. Our findings reveal that while LLM-as-judge offer a scalable solution comparable to human raters, humans may still excel at detecting subtle, context-specific nuances. Our research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on AI assisted text analysis. Further, we provide recommendations for future research, emphasizing the need for careful consideration when generalizing LLM-as-judge models across various contexts and use cases.
title Potential and Perils of Large Language Models as Judges of Unstructured Textual Data
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.08167