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Ask HN: How Do You Align Evaluator LLMs with Subject Matter Experts? (arxiv.org)
2 points by MutedEstate45 on Jan 23, 2025 | hide | past | pdf | 1 comment on HN

In plain words: A new test collection of 20 language tasks with human ratings was used to check how well 11 AI models copy human judgments. Scores swung widely by task and judge expertise, so each use should be checked against humans first.

Abstract · LLMs instead of Human Judges? A Large Scale Empirical Study across 20 NLP Evaluation Tasks

There is an increasing trend towards evaluating NLP models with LLMs instead of human judgments, raising questions about the validity of these evaluations, as well as their reproducibility in the case of proprietary models. We provide JUDGE-BENCH, an extensible collection of 20 NLP datasets with human annotations covering a broad range of evaluated properties and types of data, and comprehensively evaluate 11 current LLMs, covering both open-weight and proprietary models, for their ability to replicate the annotations. Our evaluations show substantial variance across models and datasets. Models are reliable evaluators on some tasks, but overall display substantial variability depending on the property being evaluated, the expertise level of the human judges, and whether the language is human or model-generated. We conclude that LLMs should be carefully validated against human judgments before being used as evaluators.

Anna Bavaresco, Raffaella Bernardi, Leonardo Bertolazzi, Desmond Elliott, Raquel Fernández, Albert Gatt, Esam Ghaleb, Mario Giulianelli, Michael Hanna, Alexander Koller, André F. T. Martins, Philipp Mondorf, et al.
arXiv:2406.18403 · cs.CL · submitted Jun 26, 2024 · updated Jun 2, 2025
abstract · pdf · html · Accepted to the main conference of ACL 2025

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Any LLM developers here struggling with aligning models to subject matter experts (SMEs) or domain-specific expertise? I’m finding it tough to evaluate or quantify how well an LLM aligns with SME expectations. Inspired by the paper "LLMs instead of Human Judges?" (link attached), I’m working on a tool to create a base alignment score using cutting-edge research methodologies. Do you rely on manual reviews, automated metrics a hybrid approach or something else? Or is SME alignment not a big focus for you? Curious to hear your thoughts!