arXiv Computation and Language By Nicolas Yax, Stefano Palminteri, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer

LLMs learn different forms of metacognition when trained to predict their own accuracy

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The study trains ten open‑weight large language models (LLMs) to predict their own accuracy on factual multiple‑choice questions before answering. Results show that the models’ confidence signals split into two distinct patterns: early in training, confidence aligns with output consistency (how concentrated the answer distribution is), while later, it aligns with true accuracy but only on data similar to the training set. This indicates that calibration training may not universally teach LLMs to detect their own errors.

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