Do not Abstain! Identify and Solve the Uncertainty

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Liu, Jingyu, Peng, Jingquan, Wu, xiaopeng, Li, Xubin, Ge, Tiezheng, Zheng, Bo, Liu, Yong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866908389307580416
author Liu, Jingyu
Peng, Jingquan
Wu, xiaopeng
Li, Xubin
Ge, Tiezheng
Zheng, Bo
Liu, Yong
author_facet Liu, Jingyu
Peng, Jingquan
Wu, xiaopeng
Li, Xubin
Ge, Tiezheng
Zheng, Bo
Liu, Yong
contents Despite the widespread application of Large Language Models (LLMs) across various domains, they frequently exhibit overconfidence when encountering uncertain scenarios, yet existing solutions primarily rely on evasive responses (e.g., "I don't know") overlooks the opportunity of identifying and addressing the uncertainty to generate more satisfactory responses. To systematically investigate and improve LLMs' ability of recognizing and addressing the source of uncertainty, we introduce \textbf{ConfuseBench}, a benchmark mainly focus on three types of uncertainty: document scarcity, limited capability, and query ambiguity. Experiments with ConfuseBench reveal that current LLMs struggle to accurately identify the root cause of uncertainty and solve it. They prefer to attribute uncertainty to query ambiguity while overlooking capability limitations, especially for those weaker models. To tackle this challenge, we first generate context-aware inquiries that highlight the confusing aspect of the original query. Then we judge the source of uncertainty based on the uniqueness of the inquiry's answer. Further we use an on-policy training method, InteractDPO to generate better inquiries. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of our approach.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_00780
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Do not Abstain! Identify and Solve the Uncertainty
Liu, Jingyu
Peng, Jingquan
Wu, xiaopeng
Li, Xubin
Ge, Tiezheng
Zheng, Bo
Liu, Yong
Artificial Intelligence
Despite the widespread application of Large Language Models (LLMs) across various domains, they frequently exhibit overconfidence when encountering uncertain scenarios, yet existing solutions primarily rely on evasive responses (e.g., "I don't know") overlooks the opportunity of identifying and addressing the uncertainty to generate more satisfactory responses. To systematically investigate and improve LLMs' ability of recognizing and addressing the source of uncertainty, we introduce \textbf{ConfuseBench}, a benchmark mainly focus on three types of uncertainty: document scarcity, limited capability, and query ambiguity. Experiments with ConfuseBench reveal that current LLMs struggle to accurately identify the root cause of uncertainty and solve it. They prefer to attribute uncertainty to query ambiguity while overlooking capability limitations, especially for those weaker models. To tackle this challenge, we first generate context-aware inquiries that highlight the confusing aspect of the original query. Then we judge the source of uncertainty based on the uniqueness of the inquiry's answer. Further we use an on-policy training method, InteractDPO to generate better inquiries. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of our approach.
title Do not Abstain! Identify and Solve the Uncertainty
topic Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00780