arXiv AI By Catarina G Belem, Shang Wu, Hongyu Yao, Mark Steyvers, Sameer Singh, Padhraic Smyth

From 'May' to 'Is': Certainty Distortion in Language Model Rewriting

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The study examines how language models (LMs) alter the expressed certainty of statements when rewriting text, a process termed certainty distortion. Using an LM‑based metric aligned with human judgments, the authors find that up to 75% of LM outputs exhibit such distortion, with most models more likely to inflate certainty than reduce it. Repeated paraphrasing can amplify this effect, especially in medical contexts, and while prompt interventions help, they do not fully eliminate the bias.

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