Hesitation is defeat? Connecting Linguistic and Predictive Uncertainty

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Manzo, Gianluca, Ive, Julia
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Manzo, Gianluca
Ive, Julia
author_facet Manzo, Gianluca
Ive, Julia
contents Automating chest radiograph interpretation using Deep Learning (DL) models has the potential to significantly improve clinical workflows, decision-making, and large-scale health screening. However, in medical settings, merely optimising predictive performance is insufficient, as the quantification of uncertainty is equally crucial. This paper investigates the relationship between predictive uncertainty, derived from Bayesian Deep Learning approximations, and human/linguistic uncertainty, as estimated from free-text radiology reports labelled by rule-based labellers. Utilising BERT as the model of choice, this study evaluates different binarisation methods for uncertainty labels and explores the efficacy of Monte Carlo Dropout and Deep Ensembles in estimating predictive uncertainty. The results demonstrate good model performance, but also a modest correlation between predictive and linguistic uncertainty, highlighting the challenges in aligning machine uncertainty with human interpretation nuances. Our findings suggest that while Bayesian approximations provide valuable uncertainty estimates, further refinement is necessary to fully capture and utilise the subtleties of human uncertainty in clinical applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_03910
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hesitation is defeat? Connecting Linguistic and Predictive Uncertainty
Manzo, Gianluca
Ive, Julia
Computation and Language
Automating chest radiograph interpretation using Deep Learning (DL) models has the potential to significantly improve clinical workflows, decision-making, and large-scale health screening. However, in medical settings, merely optimising predictive performance is insufficient, as the quantification of uncertainty is equally crucial. This paper investigates the relationship between predictive uncertainty, derived from Bayesian Deep Learning approximations, and human/linguistic uncertainty, as estimated from free-text radiology reports labelled by rule-based labellers. Utilising BERT as the model of choice, this study evaluates different binarisation methods for uncertainty labels and explores the efficacy of Monte Carlo Dropout and Deep Ensembles in estimating predictive uncertainty. The results demonstrate good model performance, but also a modest correlation between predictive and linguistic uncertainty, highlighting the challenges in aligning machine uncertainty with human interpretation nuances. Our findings suggest that while Bayesian approximations provide valuable uncertainty estimates, further refinement is necessary to fully capture and utilise the subtleties of human uncertainty in clinical applications.
title Hesitation is defeat? Connecting Linguistic and Predictive Uncertainty
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03910