arXiv Machine Learning

Language Carries the Expert's Impression: Instrument-Anchored LLM Judges Transfer Counseling-Quality Assessment and Beat In-Domain Training

arXiv:2610. 08055v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Automatic assessment of communication quality in dyadic counseling conversations is bottlenecked by data: expert-rated corpora are small and expensive to grow.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 28

Interpretable, Fairly Evaluated Automated L2 Speaking Assessment that Beats the Single-Human Ceiling and Why Pause Encoding Does Not Change LLM Fluency Scores

The paper presents an interpretable, fair, and accurately benchmarked automated system for assessing second‑language English speaking. Using a hybrid of feature‑based speech‑timing metrics and a large language model (LLM) fluency judgment, the system achieves a Spearman correlation of 0.818 with the ICNALE Global Rating Archive, outperforming 81 % of trained human raters. A controlled study shows that encoding pauses into the LLM prompt does not meaningfully affect fluency scores, indicating that the system’s fluency signal derives from measurable speech‑timing features.

By Eichi Uehara
arXiv AI
Aug 28

Distinct Profiles of Run-to-Run Score Reliability and Expert-Panel Alignment Across Four LLM Evaluators of Simulated Japanese-Language AI-to-AI Counseling

The study examined how four large language models (GPT‑5.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Claude Opus 4.8, and Fable 5) scored 18 simulated Japanese‑language AI‑to‑AI counseling sessions compared to ratings from 15 human counseling experts. Each model evaluated every transcript three times on four motivational‑interviewing‑informed dimensions and overall quality, consistently giving higher scores for softening sustain talk and overall quality than the expert panel, though the magnitude varied by model. Run‑to‑run reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from .33 to .96) did not predict closer alignment with expert judgments, and the models’ ability to discriminate counselor conditions was distinct from both reliability and alignment.

By Keita Kiuchi, Yoshikazu Fujimoto, Hideyuki Got\=o, Tomonori Hosokawa, Makoto Nishimura, Y\=osuke Sat\=o, Izumi Sezai, Tomohiro Inoue
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 15

The Limits of Reference-Free Speech Quality Metrics as Evaluators and Rewards on Modern Text-to-Speech

arXiv:2609.13150v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Reference-free quality predictors such as UTMOS, DNSMOS and SCOREQ are the de facto automatic evaluators for text-to-speech (TTS) and are increasingl...

By Antonis Asonitis, Juan Pablo Zuluaga Gomez, Francesco Verdini, Aref Farhadipour, Marzieh Razavi, Pierre-Edouard Honnet, Vijeta Avijeet
arXiv AI
Oct 2

On-Device Named-Entity Recognition: A Deployability Study of Accuracy, Cost, Reliability, and Confidence

The paper evaluates nine on‑device named‑entity recognition models ranging from classical taggers to large language models, measuring not only accuracy but also latency and output validity. Using a silver‑gold benchmark derived from an LLM judge panel and a human‑validated corpus, the study shows that encoder‑based models achieve comparable accuracy to a 4 B instruct LLM while being much smaller, faster, and producing no malformed output. Confidence calibration of GLiNER is analyzed, revealing over‑confidence but improved reliability after temperature scaling and thresholding.

By Vinay Kumar Chaganti
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 24

Feed the Panel Dimensions, Not Verdicts: Rubric-Decomposed Fusion of Vision-Language Aesthetic Judges

The paper investigates whether panels of vision‑language models (VLMs) can reliably judge image aesthetics. It shows that a panel of holistic judges rarely outperforms its best member, but when each model scores images on five rubric‑defined dimensions and these dimension scores are fused across model families, the panel consistently beats the best single VLM on two datasets (EVA and PARA). The study demonstrates that the value of a panel depends on the type of input it receives, and that dimension‑based fusion yields measurable gains at the cost of additional labeling and API usage.

By Amit Jadhav, Shaurya Beriwala, Beomjin Kim
arXiv Computation and Language
Aug 28

Multi-Expert Conformal Risk Control for Pairwise LLM Judging in Open-Ended Dialogue

The paper introduces multi-expert Conformal Risk Control (CRC) algorithms for pairwise LLM-as-a-Judge evaluation in open-ended dialogue. Two initial methods—Score Averaging and Decision Voting—aggregate at the score and decision levels, respectively, and outperform single-expert approaches on homogeneous expert panels. To address limited coverage on heterogeneous panels, the authors propose Marginal‑Calibrated Conformal Consensus (MC3), which captures distinct per‑expert scoring scales through threshold ratios while maintaining a unified decision function, and demonstrate its effectiveness on a new 1,800‑pair human pairwise‑preference benchmark called Panel.

By Ming Cheng, Yusheng Dai, Qiuhong Ke, Zhaolin Chen, Lizhen Qu
arXiv AI
Oct 5

Sentence-Level Context Sensitivity as a Training-Free Detector of Unsupported Content, Evaluated Against Trained Verifiers

The paper proposes a training‑free detector that uses sentence‑level context sensitivity to identify unsupported content in retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) answers. By re‑scoring each sentence with full context, no context, and each chunk removed, the method flags the chunk whose removal most reduces a sentence’s likelihood as the likely source. Evaluated on RAGTruth, TofuEval, and RAGBench, the detector outperforms answer‑level faithfulness scores, achieving AUCs up to 0.745 and matching per‑chunk fact‑checkers while using only a fraction of the compute required by large‑language‑model judges.

By Mohamed Aly Bouke