arXiv Computation and Language

An Analysis of Training-Free Self-Reported Confidence in Language Models

arXiv AI
2d ago

The Mirage of Calibrated Confidence: Trajectory-Independence of Verbalized Confidence in Vision-Language Models

The paper investigates how Vision‑Language Models (VLMs) often report high confidence even after self‑correcting or arriving at wrong answers, a phenomenon the authors attribute to the verbalized confidence being largely independent of the model’s reasoning trajectory. By analyzing content variation, token masking, and hesitation markers, the authors demonstrate that confidence does not adequately reflect the actual reasoning process and that calibration training can sometimes worsen this disconnect. To address this blind spot, they introduce the Trajectory‑Grounding Score (TGS) in two forms—TGS‑self and TGS‑pair—and propose TGS‑Bench, a suite of 10 benchmarks that reveal divergences between conventional calibration metrics and trajectory‑grounded confidence.

By Jisoo Yang, Jaeho Han, Trung X. Pham, Junyeong Kim
arXiv AI
Jul 23

Rethinking Uncertainty Evaluation in Large Language Models

arXiv:2607. 19367v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Calibration is the primary criterion for evaluating LLM confidence, but it is insufficient: it admits trivially incoherent estimators, depends on the evaluation distribution, and does not test the extent to which the estimation can be interpreted as a consistent, underlying probability function.

By Krish Matta, Atharv Naphade, Andy Zou
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 11

Towards Reliable Medical LLMs: Benchmarking and Enhancing Confidence Estimation of Large Language Models in Medical Consultation

The paper introduces the first benchmark for evaluating confidence estimation in large language models during multi‑turn medical consultations, combining three types of medical data and an information sufficiency gradient to capture how confidence and correctness evolve as evidence accumulates. Experiments with 27 methods reveal that token‑level and consistency‑level confidence approaches are limited by medical data, and that medical reasoning must be judged on both diagnostic accuracy and information completeness. Building on these findings, the authors propose MedConf, a retrieval‑augmented, linguistically grounded self‑assessment framework that aligns patient information with supporting, missing, and contradictory relations, producing interpretable confidence estimates that outperform existing methods across multiple datasets and LLMs.

By Zhiyao Ren, Yibing Zhan, Siyuan Liang, Guozheng Ma, Baosheng Yu, Dacheng Tao