Local LLM Ensembles for Zero-shot Portuguese Named Entity Recognition

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sarcinelli, João Lucas Luz Lima, Silva, Diego Furtado
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Sarcinelli, João Lucas Luz Lima
Silva, Diego Furtado
author_facet Sarcinelli, João Lucas Luz Lima
Silva, Diego Furtado
contents Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in many Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks through in-context learning but often under-perform in Named Entity Recognition (NER), especially for lower-resource languages like Portuguese. While open-weight LLMs enable local deployment, no single model dominates all tasks, motivating ensemble approaches. However, existing LLM ensembles focus on text generation or classification, leaving NER under-explored. In this context, this work proposes a novel three-step ensemble pipeline for zero-shot NER using similarly capable, locally run LLMs. Our method outperforms individual LLMs in four out of five Portuguese NER datasets by leveraging a heuristic to select optimal model combinations with minimal annotated data. Moreover, we show that ensembles obtained on different source datasets generally outperform individual LLMs in cross-dataset configurations, potentially eliminating the need for annotated data for the current task. Our work advances scalable, low-resource, and zero-shot NER by effectively combining multiple small LLMs without fine-tuning. Code is available at https://github.com/Joao-Luz/local-llm-ner-ensemble.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_10043
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Local LLM Ensembles for Zero-shot Portuguese Named Entity Recognition
Sarcinelli, João Lucas Luz Lima
Silva, Diego Furtado
Machine Learning
Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in many Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks through in-context learning but often under-perform in Named Entity Recognition (NER), especially for lower-resource languages like Portuguese. While open-weight LLMs enable local deployment, no single model dominates all tasks, motivating ensemble approaches. However, existing LLM ensembles focus on text generation or classification, leaving NER under-explored. In this context, this work proposes a novel three-step ensemble pipeline for zero-shot NER using similarly capable, locally run LLMs. Our method outperforms individual LLMs in four out of five Portuguese NER datasets by leveraging a heuristic to select optimal model combinations with minimal annotated data. Moreover, we show that ensembles obtained on different source datasets generally outperform individual LLMs in cross-dataset configurations, potentially eliminating the need for annotated data for the current task. Our work advances scalable, low-resource, and zero-shot NER by effectively combining multiple small LLMs without fine-tuning. Code is available at https://github.com/Joao-Luz/local-llm-ner-ensemble.
title Local LLM Ensembles for Zero-shot Portuguese Named Entity Recognition
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.10043