arXiv Machine Learning

CORDIAL: Calibrating Ordinal LLM Outputs from Few Labels

CORDIAL is a calibration method for large language models that treats ordinal outputs as noisy measurements of true labels and corrects them using a small, interpretable channel of five parameters. The method can be calibrated from only a few labels and preserves first‑order stochastic order. Experiments on Amazon reviews and CMU‑MOSEI transcripts with four LLMs show that CORDIAL achieves the lowest log loss in most settings, outperforming other calibrators when the calibration set is small, and can also learn priors from other tasks or fuse multiple LLMs.

arXiv Computation and Language
Oct 22

S-EDL: Eliciting Self-Evidence from Sequence Likelihoods for Semantic Calibration of LLMs

S-EDL is a new evidential method that calibrates large language models for open‑ended generation by using the model’s own sequence likelihoods to build a differentiable Dirichlet prior over prompt‑specific semantic classes. This approach optimizes an evidential loss that provides a calibration‑aware training signal without relying on fixed multiple‑choice options. Experiments on four open‑ended benchmarks and three models show that S-EDL reduces semantic calibration error and improves accuracy, offering a framework for trustworthy LLM deployment in complex applications.

By Yawei Li, Jiazheng Li, David R\"ugamer, Bernd Bischl, Yulan He, Mina Rezaei
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 24

LLMs are Bayesian, In Expectation, Not in Realization

arXiv:2507. 11768v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Bayesian accounts of in-context learning face a direct objection: exact posterior predictives for exchangeable data are invariant to task-preserving order, yet transformers change next-token probabilities when the same examples are serialized differently.

By Leon Chlon, Fatima Sheaib, Zein Khamis, Maggie Chlon, Mahdi El Zein, MarcAntonio M. Awada
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 1

When Calibration Rankings Reverse: Accuracy-Controlled Evaluation for Fair Comparison of LLMs

The paper argues that traditional global calibration metrics, such as Expected Calibration Error and Brier Score, are confounded by differences in model accuracy when comparing large language models. It introduces ACE, an accuracy‑controlled evaluation framework that offers Instance‑Aligned, Distribution‑Aligned, and Candidate‑Aligned views to provide fairer cross‑model comparisons. Experiments across various benchmarks reveal that many reported calibration advantages disappear after accuracy control and that model rankings often reverse, indicating that raw global metrics are unreliable for cross‑model calibration assessment.

By Zhichao Yang, Caiqi Zhang, Ruihan Yang, Chengzu Li, Nigel Collier, Deqing Yang
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 10

Are LLMs Positionally Consistent Ordinal Classifiers? A Systematic Evaluation

Large language models (LLMs) used for ordinal classification exhibit positional bias, where changes in label order, demonstration order, and demonstration placement affect predictions. Systematic experiments across ten frontier LLMs, eight prompt/task/model factors, and five datasets reveal that all models are sensitive to these positional sources, and that accuracy and stability often diverge. Various correction methods, including pointwise, pairwise, and listwise inference, do not reliably mitigate the bias, though a comparison-based listwise approach shows the best overall balance yet varies across models and bias types.

By Yu Wang, Zhe Zhou, Menglin Liu, Ge Shi
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jul 6

How Much is Left? LLMs Linearly Encode Their Remaining Output Length

Large language models generate one token at a time, yet their responses show remarkably consistent length structure: step-by-step solutions converge in predictable token counts, retrievals stop after a few sentences, retractions extend responses by measurable amounts. We ask whether the model carries an internal estimate of how much response remains.

arXiv AI
Jul 28

Bayesian-LoRA: Probabilistic Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models

arXiv:2601. 21003v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large Language Models usually put more emphasis on accuracy and therefore, will guess even when not certain about the prediction, which is especially severe when fine-tuned on small datasets due to the inherent tendency toward miscalibration.

By Moule Lin, Shuhao Guan, Andrea Patane, David Gregg, Goetz Botterweck