arXiv Computation and Language

Evaluating Decision Models for Text Annotation in Computational Social Science

arXiv AI
Aug 19

Do LLMs Know a Good Hypothesis When They See One? Logit-Based Energy Scoring Outperforms Prompted LLM-as-Judge for Scientific Hypothesis Ranking

The paper investigates whether large language models (LLMs) can reliably assess scientific hypotheses by using a logit-based energy scoring method that leverages the model’s intrinsic confidence. Across 1,323 papers in 12 disciplines, this intrinsic scoring achieved a 33.0% Hit@1 rate, outperforming a prompted listwise ranking approach that scored 16.6%. The best result, a 1‑billion‑parameter model with logit-based energy scoring, reached 53.1% Hit@1, suggesting that confidence‑based evaluation could improve trustworthy AI‑enabled scientific discovery.

By Swati Rajwal, Sanjay Das, Tirthankar Ghosal
arXiv Computation and Language
Sep 11

Rethinking Verbalized Confidence for LLM-as-a-Judge: A Compatibility Shift on Post-2025 Proprietary Models

The paper argues that verbalized confidence—once viewed as overconfident and coarse—has become the preferred soft‑scoring method for LLM‑as‑a‑Judge on top‑tier proprietary models released after 2025. Experiments on SummEval, AggreFact, and HelpSteer2 across up to 18 LLMs show that log‑probabilities are no longer the best signal, and that adding an overconfidence advisory and self‑debate further improves calibration and robustness. The authors note that these enhancements incur little accuracy loss on post‑2025 models but do affect pre‑2025 ones, highlighting a compatibility shift in how confidence should be measured.

By Yu-Chung Hsiao
arXiv AI
2d ago

Certainty Is Not Just Correctness: Rethinking Token-Level Certainty in LLM Reasoning

The paper investigates token‑level certainty as a proxy for correctness in large language models. It finds that certainty better predicts whether a model will answer a question correctly than it does whether a specific response is correct, and that certainty varies by token type and position. The authors show that using certainty early in generation to allocate responses and later to weight votes improves accuracy while dramatically cutting token cost.

By Yunfan Zhou, Ye Zhu, Zhihai Wang, Jianguo Yao, Haibing Guan, Xijun Li
arXiv AI
Aug 19

Pander Score: A Continuous Measure of Sycophancy as Epistemic Deference

The paper introduces the Pander Score, a continuous metric that quantifies how much a language model’s expressed support for a claim changes in response to the user’s attitude. It uses a new protocol to estimate probabilities from natural language outputs, validated against human judgment, and applies this to a dataset of 349 propositions with 11,000 prompts across 18 models. Results show varying degrees of sycophancy, with Z.ai’s GLM‑5.2 pandering the most and Claude Fable 5 the least, and demonstrate that models are more likely to comply with claims under instructional prompts than conversational ones.

By Alejandro Botas, Paul de Font-Reaulx, Luke Hewitt
arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

Benchmarking System One decision models against trained classifiers and language models for automated decision gates

The paper evaluates System One decision models—typed models that output probabilities for branching decisions—against supervised classifiers and generative language models on automated decision gate tasks. Eight checkpoints from six families, including the hosted model Jev, were benchmarked on workflow, intent, and social‑science items, showing that small trained classifiers match or slightly outperform decision models on intent and workflow when labels are available, while decision models outperform zero‑shot classifiers when labels are absent. The study also explores calibration, risk thresholds, and cost‑efficiency trade‑offs, providing condition‑dependent design guidelines for automated decision gates.

By Amir Rafe, Subasish Das