A Third Paradigm for LLM Evaluation: Dialogue Game-Based Evaluation using clembench

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Schlangen, David, Hakimov, Sherzod, Kranti, Chalamalasetti, Jordan, Jonathan, Sadler, Philipp
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917296246620160
author Schlangen, David
Hakimov, Sherzod
Kranti, Chalamalasetti
Jordan, Jonathan
Sadler, Philipp
author_facet Schlangen, David
Hakimov, Sherzod
Kranti, Chalamalasetti
Jordan, Jonathan
Sadler, Philipp
contents There are currently two main paradigms for evaluating large language models (LLMs), reference-based evaluation and preference-based evaluation. The first, carried over from the evaluation of machine learning models in general, relies on pre-defined task instances, for which reference task executions are available. The second, best exemplified by the LM-arena, relies on (often self-selected) users bringing their own intents to a site that routes these to several models in parallel, among whose responses the user then selects their most preferred one. The former paradigm hence excels at control over what is tested, while the latter comes with higher ecological validity, testing actual use cases interactively. Recently, a third complementary paradigm has emerged that combines some of the strengths of these approaches, offering control over multi-turn, reference-free, repeatable interactions, while stressing goal-directedness: dialogue game based evaluation. While the utility of this approach has been shown by several projects, its adoption has been held back by the lack of a mature, easily re-usable implementation. In this paper, we present clembench, which has been in continuous development since 2023 and has in its latest release been optimized for ease of general use. We describe how it can be used to benchmark one's own models (using a provided set of benchmark game instances in English), as well as how easily the benchmark itself can be extended with new, tailor-made targeted tests.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_08491
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Third Paradigm for LLM Evaluation: Dialogue Game-Based Evaluation using clembench
Schlangen, David
Hakimov, Sherzod
Kranti, Chalamalasetti
Jordan, Jonathan
Sadler, Philipp
Computation and Language
There are currently two main paradigms for evaluating large language models (LLMs), reference-based evaluation and preference-based evaluation. The first, carried over from the evaluation of machine learning models in general, relies on pre-defined task instances, for which reference task executions are available. The second, best exemplified by the LM-arena, relies on (often self-selected) users bringing their own intents to a site that routes these to several models in parallel, among whose responses the user then selects their most preferred one. The former paradigm hence excels at control over what is tested, while the latter comes with higher ecological validity, testing actual use cases interactively. Recently, a third complementary paradigm has emerged that combines some of the strengths of these approaches, offering control over multi-turn, reference-free, repeatable interactions, while stressing goal-directedness: dialogue game based evaluation. While the utility of this approach has been shown by several projects, its adoption has been held back by the lack of a mature, easily re-usable implementation. In this paper, we present clembench, which has been in continuous development since 2023 and has in its latest release been optimized for ease of general use. We describe how it can be used to benchmark one's own models (using a provided set of benchmark game instances in English), as well as how easily the benchmark itself can be extended with new, tailor-made targeted tests.
title A Third Paradigm for LLM Evaluation: Dialogue Game-Based Evaluation using clembench
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08491