arXiv Computation and Language By Chenglong Ma, Xinye Wanyan, Danula Hettiachchi, Ziqi Xu, Jeffrey Chan

The "Curse of Knowledge" in LLM Query Simulation: Concept Provenance for Tracing Answer-Side Intrusion

Read the original on arXiv Computation and Language →

The paper introduces concept provenance, a framework that categorizes query concepts into backstory-supported, human-central, human-tail, and candidate answer-side zones to detect knowledge intrusion in LLM-generated search queries. Applying this framework to 77,004 queries across 100 topics, 8 LLMs, and 5 prompt conditions, the authors find that 7.40% of non-generic concepts are candidate answer-side and appear in 97 of 100 topics, with human validation revealing 68.2% relaxed precision and equal contributions from knowledge and deployment intrusion. The study shows that while prompt conditions do not eliminate intrusion, post-generation concept-provenance selection can achieve 99% elimination, positioning concept provenance as a diagnostic tool rather than an evaluation predictor.

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