about
More Meaningful Evaluations for Values and Opinions in Large Language Models (arxiv.org)
2 points by yenniejun111 on Aug 12, 2024 | hide | past | pdf | discuss on HN

In plain words: Instead of forcing chatbots to pick from multiple-choice survey answers, this study tests them with open-ended questions like real users actually ask. Forced answers changed with the format and weren't stable, and open-ended replies differed again, so survey scores don't reflect real behavior.

Abstract · Political Compass or Spinning Arrow? Towards More Meaningful Evaluations for Values and Opinions in Large Language Models

Much recent work seeks to evaluate values and opinions in large language models (LLMs) using multiple-choice surveys and questionnaires. Most of this work is motivated by concerns around real-world LLM applications. For example, politically-biased LLMs may subtly influence society when they are used by millions of people. Such real-world concerns, however, stand in stark contrast to the artificiality of current evaluations: real users do not typically ask LLMs survey questions. Motivated by this discrepancy, we challenge the prevailing constrained evaluation paradigm for values and opinions in LLMs and explore more realistic unconstrained evaluations. As a case study, we focus on the popular Political Compass Test (PCT). In a systematic review, we find that most prior work using the PCT forces models to comply with the PCT's multiple-choice format. We show that models give substantively different answers when not forced; that answers change depending on how models are forced; and that answers lack paraphrase robustness. Then, we demonstrate that models give different answers yet again in a more realistic open-ended answer setting. We distill these findings into recommendations and open challenges in evaluating values and opinions in LLMs.

Paul Röttger, Valentin Hofmann, Valentina Pyatkin, Musashi Hinck, Hannah Rose Kirk, Hinrich Schütze, Dirk Hovy
arXiv:2402.16786 · cs.CL, cs.AI · submitted Feb 26, 2024 · updated Jun 5, 2024
abstract · pdf · html · Accepted at ACL 2024 (Main Conference)

add comment on HN