Rankers, Judges, and Assistants: Towards Understanding the Interplay of LLMs in Information Retrieval Evaluation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Balog, Krisztian, Metzler, Donald, Qin, Zhen
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Balog, Krisztian
Metzler, Donald
Qin, Zhen
author_facet Balog, Krisztian
Metzler, Donald
Qin, Zhen
contents Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integral to information retrieval (IR), powering ranking, evaluation, and AI-assisted content creation. This widespread adoption necessitates a critical examination of potential biases arising from the interplay between these LLM-based components. This paper synthesizes existing research and presents novel experiment designs that explore how LLM-based rankers and assistants influence LLM-based judges. We provide the first empirical evidence of LLM judges exhibiting significant bias towards LLM-based rankers. Furthermore, we observe limitations in LLM judges' ability to discern subtle system performance differences. Contrary to some previous findings, our preliminary study does not find evidence of bias against AI-generated content. These results highlight the need for a more holistic view of the LLM-driven information ecosystem. To this end, we offer initial guidelines and a research agenda to ensure the reliable use of LLMs in IR evaluation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_19092
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rankers, Judges, and Assistants: Towards Understanding the Interplay of LLMs in Information Retrieval Evaluation
Balog, Krisztian
Metzler, Donald
Qin, Zhen
Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integral to information retrieval (IR), powering ranking, evaluation, and AI-assisted content creation. This widespread adoption necessitates a critical examination of potential biases arising from the interplay between these LLM-based components. This paper synthesizes existing research and presents novel experiment designs that explore how LLM-based rankers and assistants influence LLM-based judges. We provide the first empirical evidence of LLM judges exhibiting significant bias towards LLM-based rankers. Furthermore, we observe limitations in LLM judges' ability to discern subtle system performance differences. Contrary to some previous findings, our preliminary study does not find evidence of bias against AI-generated content. These results highlight the need for a more holistic view of the LLM-driven information ecosystem. To this end, we offer initial guidelines and a research agenda to ensure the reliable use of LLMs in IR evaluation.
title Rankers, Judges, and Assistants: Towards Understanding the Interplay of LLMs in Information Retrieval Evaluation
topic Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.19092